PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF THE COURSE ON INTRODUCTION TO GERMANIC LINGUISTICS

The present article investigates foreign language teacher training quality enhancement by surveying pedagogical university students’ opinions on important aspects of the course of Introduction to Germanic Linguistics within the Educational Programme for Bachelor’s Degree in Education. The prime purpose is to study the perception of the above-mentioned optional course by Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University (DIFSPU) students, with a focus on its content, organization and relevance to foreign language teacher training as well as on its professional competence formation efficiency. The complexity of the problems involved requires a combination of different methods, i.e. empirical, theoretical and statistical ones. 42 undergraduate DIFSPU students majoring in 014 “Secondary Education (English Language and Literature)” and 014 “Secondary Education (German Language and Literature)” took part in the experiment. The main survey tool was a questionnaire reflecting the parameters of assessing the course of Introduction to Germanic Linguistics. The data collected provides a solid basis for the revision of the course content, structure, organization, educational significance and efficiency, based on the direct participants’ assessments and comments. The students’ feedback reveals: 1) unanimous approval of the content and organizational principles of the discipline; 2) mixed opinions on its importance in the structure of the Educational Programme for Bachelor's Degree in Education; 3) variability of the course efficiency assessments. The data obtained allow for determining the conditions of an efficient implementation of Introduction to Germanic Linguistics into educational practice, such as prior familiarization of students with its aim and essence, emphasis on its applicability and optionality as well as its adaptation to the level and needs of future teachers. The data interpretation equally contributes to establishing the prospects of enhancing the course: 1) proportionalizing diverse types of educational activities; 2) increasing flexibility and variability in the educative process organization; 3) more efficiently interiorizing its content in terms of professional education priorities for future teachers of the English and German languages.

APPLICATION AS A WAY OF FORMING A LINGUOCULTURAL DIALOGUE IN NANCY HUSTON'S BILINGUAL NOVEL "CANTIQUE DES PLAINES" / "PLAINSONG"

Постановка задачи. Исследование билингвальных художественных произведений, созданных писателями-транслингвами, использующими несколько языков в своей творческой деятельности, является одной из наиболее актуальных проблем теории языка, в частности таких ее областей, как социолингвистика, стилистика, язык и социум, язык и культура. Подобные произведения, переведённые автором с одного языка на другой и адресованные представителям разных этнических сообществ, носят лингвосоциокультурный характер, который достигается писателем посредством создания интертекста, содержащего внутритекстовые вкрапления, основанные на аллегориях, реминисценциях, аллюзиях, цитациях и аппликациях. При этом аппликации принадлежит весьма важная роль в решении задачи формирования лингвокультурного диалога в билингвальном романе. Результаты исследования. Во франкоязычной версии романа Нэнси Хьюстон «Cantique des plaines», созданной в результате осуществленного ею самоперевода англоязычного романа «Plainsong», выявлено много текстовых аппликаций в виде фрагментов песен, с помощью которых автор формирует лингвокультурный диалог, а также создает не только смысловой, но и музыкальный фон произведения. Установлено, что с целью формирования лингвокультурного диалога в билингвальном романе аппликации в виде отрывков песен могут не совпадать в англоязычной и франкоязычной версиях. Данный эффект достигается во франкоязычной версии благодаря использованию цитат с расширением их посредством сочетаний слов; использованию лексем с более конкретным, точным значением, чем у их английских аналогов; использованию паронимов их английских аналогов; использованию дословного перевода песен с английского языка на французский; использованию включения в перевод на французский язык строфы из англоязычной песни с сохранением при переводе рифмы без искажения исходного смысла самой песни. Выводы. Результаты исследования позволяют сделать вывод о том, что аппликация песенных фрагментов в романе Нэнси Хьюстон «Cantique des plaines» / «Plainsong» является довольно продуктивным стилистическим приемом и имеет несколько видов реализации в зависимости от потребности автора в создании определенного смыслового, эмоционального и музыкального фона произведения. Благодаря широкому использованию и адекватному выбору писателем-транслингвом того или иного вида аппликации она служит эффективным способом формирования лингвокультурного диалога в билингвальном романе Нэнси Хьюстон «Cantique des plaines» / «Plainsong. Problem statement. The study of bilingual novels created by translingual writers who use several languages in their creative activities is one of the most urgent problems of language theory, specifically in such areas as sociolinguistics, stylistics, language and society, language and culture. Such works, translated by the author from one language to another and addressed to representatives of different ethnic communities, are of a linguistic and socio-cultural nature, which is achieved by the writer through the creation of an intertext containing intra-textual inclusions based on allegories, reminiscences, allusions, citations and applications. At the same time, the application plays a very important role in problem solving of forming a linguistic and cultural dialogue in a bilingual novel. The results of the study. In the French-language version of Nancy Huston's novel «Cantique des plaines», created as a result of self-translation of the English-language version of her novel «Plainsong», many text applications in the form of fragments of songs are revealed, by means of which the author forms a linguistic and cultural dialogue, and creates not only a semantic, but also a musical background of the novel. It is established that in order to form a linguistic and cultural dialogue in a bilingual novel, applications in the form of song fragments may not coincide in the English and French versions. This effect is achieved in the French-language version through the use of citations with their extension by word combinations; the use of lexemes with a more specific, accurate meaning than their English counterparts; the use of paronyms of their English counterparts; the use of a literal translation of songs from English into French; the use of including a stanza from an English-language song in the translation into French, while preserving the rhyme without distorting the original meaning of the song itself. Conclusion. The results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that the application of song fragments in Nancy Huston's novel «Cantique des plaines» / «Plainsong» is a rather productive stylistic technique and has several types of implementation, depending on the author's need to create a certain semantic, emotional and musical background of the work. Due to the wide use and adequate choice of a particular type of application by a translingual writer, it serves as an effective way of forming a linguistic and cultural dialogue in Nancy Huston's bilingual novel «Cantique des plaines» / «Plainsong». The results of the study indicate that it is relevant not only for the theory of language, but also for Romance and Germanic linguistics.

Diez, Meyer-Lübke, and Co. The Founding of Romance Linguistics

The study of Romance linguistics was born in the 19th-century German university, and like all linguistics of that era it is historical in nature. With respect to Indo-European and Germanic linguistics, a difference was immediately apparent: Unlike Indo-European and Common Germanic, Latin’s attestation is extensive in duration, as well as rich and varied: Romance linguists can thus make use of reconstruction as well as documentation. Friedrich Diez, author of the first historical grammar and first etymological dictionary on Romance languages, founded Romance linguistics. His studies singlehandedly constructed the foundations of the discipline. His teaching soon spread not only across German-speaking countries, but also into France and Italy. Subsequently, the most significant contributions came from two scholars trained in the Indo-European field: the German linguist Hugo Schuchardt, whose doctoral thesis studied with sharp theoretical awareness the passage from Latin to the Romance languages, and the Italian Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, who showed how the Romance panorama could be extraordinarily enriched by the analysis of nonstandard varieties. The discipline thus developed fully and radiated out. Great issues came to be debated: models of linguistic change (genealogical tree, wave), the possibility of distinguishing dialect groups, the relative weight of phonology, and semantics in lexical reconstruction. New disciplines such as linguistic geography were born, and new instruments like the linguistic atlas were forged. Romance linguistics thus became the avant-garde of general linguistics. Meanwhile, a new synthesis of the discipline had been created by a Swiss scholar, Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke, who published a historical grammar and an etymological dictionary of the Romance languages.

A distinctness approach to clitic combinations in Romance

This paper analyses the combinatorial restrictions that operate in clitic clusters in certain Eastern Iberian varieties (Aragonese, Spanish, and Catalan). In particular, I focus on the combination of third person clitics. As it is well known, in some Romance varieties the combination of a third person accusative clitic and a third person dative clitic is banned (the so-called ∗le lo restriction, Bonet, Eulàlia. 1991. Morphology after syntax: Pronominal clitics in Romance. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dissertation; Cuervo, María Cristina. 2013. Spanish clitic clusters: Three of a perfect pair. Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 2. 191–220; Nevins, Andrew. 2007. The representation of third person and its consequences for person-case effects. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 25(2). 273–313; Ordóñez, Francisco. 2002. Some clitic combinations in the syntax of Romance. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 1. 201–224, Ordóñez, Francisco. 2012. Clitics in Spanish. In José I. Hualde, Antxon Olarrea & Erin O’Rouke (eds.), The handbook of Spanish Linguistics, 423–453. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell; Perlmutter, David. 1971. Deep and surface structure constraints in syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston). In order to license this troublesome combination, languages resort to different ‘repair strategies’ modifying the structure of one of the merged clitics. In the literature on clitic combinations, there have been two main proposals of analysis: morphological and syntactical. In this paper, I put forward an analysis based on the Distinctness Condition (Hiraiwa, Ken. 2010. The syntactic OCP. In Yukio Otsu (ed.), The proceedings of the 11th Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics, 35–56. Hituzi: Tokyo; Neeleman, Ad & Hans van de Koot. 2005. Syntactic haplology. In Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax, 685–710. Wiley-Blackwell; Perlmutter, David. 1971. Deep and surface structure constraints in syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Richards, Norvin. 2010. Uttering trees, vol. 56. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Van Riemsdijk, Henk. 1998. Categorial feature magnetism: The endocentricity and distribution of projections. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 2(1). 1–48; Yip, Moira. 1998. Identity avoxidance in phonology and morphology. In Steven G. Lapointe, Diane K. Brentari & Patrick M. Farell (eds.), Mophology and its relation to phonology and syntax, 216–246. Stanford, CA: CSLI). Specifically, I argue that the restrictions that constraint clitic combinations are due to the impossibility to linearize two identical syntactic objects, such as <XP, XP> (Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130. 33–49; Chomsky, Noam. 2015. Problems of projection. In Elisa Di Domenico, Cornelia Hamann & Simona Matteini (eds.), Structures, strategies and beyond: Studies in honour of Adriana Belletti, 1–16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Moro, Andrea. 2000. Dynamic antisymmetry (No. 38). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Richards, Norvin. 2010. Uttering trees, vol. 56. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). From this perspective, cross-linguistic variation is the result of different ‘repair strategies’ languages deploy to make <XP, XP> objects linearizable (Richards, Norvin. 2010. Uttering trees, vol. 56. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).