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Introduction To Volume 64 Jan 2014

Introduction To Volume 64

Russian Language Journal

On behalf of the editorial team of the Russian Language Journal, it is with great pleasure that we present Volume 64. The current issue of RLJ sees an expansion of our reinstated section of reviews, under Professor Michael Gorham’s editorship, as well as a special section, Humanities+, edited by Dr. Tony Brown of Brigham Young University, on the excellent joint Symposium held there this past January by the Russian State University for the Humanities and BYU. His summary appears next; as a participant in the symposium, I can report that the papers collected here present the symposium’s thought-provoking perspective on …


Introduction To Articles From The 2014 Annual Conference Of The Russian State University For The Humanities American Studies Center: Special Section On Humanities+, N. Anthony Brown Jan 2014

Introduction To Articles From The 2014 Annual Conference Of The Russian State University For The Humanities American Studies Center: Special Section On Humanities+, N. Anthony Brown

Russian Language Journal

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Professor Marina Kaul of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU), together with Professor Irwin Weil of Northwestern University, co-founded the American Studies Center at RGGU, the two-fold goals of which were 1) to expose post-Soviet Russian scholars and students to a reasonably objective view and appreciation of American history, culture, and politics; and 2) to help American scholars and students to see themselves as others saw them. Thus far, the Center has held annual conferences, facilitated professional and student exchanges, and published numerous conference proceedings. It has enjoyed the …


The Language Flagship Model And The Humanities, Sam Eisen Jan 2014

The Language Flagship Model And The Humanities, Sam Eisen

Russian Language Journal

The Language Flagship program provides a model that strengthens and deepens cultural engagement within the humanities and creates bridges to collaboration across disciplines. Flagship addresses needs for national security and global competitiveness and integrates professional and life experience into the humanities and other fields for the students who engage in this course of study. The cross-disciplinary nature of the Flagship program and the level of personal, cultural and professional engagement required to complete the program are successfully changing the undergraduate study experience in ways that address significant issues in the ongoing discussion of a crisis in the humanities. The Language …


The University Of Rhode Island International Engineering Program: A Model For The Merger Of Technology And The Humanities, John M. Grandin, Sigrid Berka Jan 2014

The University Of Rhode Island International Engineering Program: A Model For The Merger Of Technology And The Humanities, John M. Grandin, Sigrid Berka

Russian Language Journal

Contrary to a long-established and seemingly irrefutable tradition, American parents, educators, private and public sector leaders, and students are beginning to doubt the value of a university education. Charges have been leveled, for example, that students today are spending substantially less time on academics than their predecessors and are making little progress during their undergraduate years in their ability to read, write, speak, or think analytically and critically (see, for example, Arum and Roksa 2011, Vedder and Denhart 2011). Others have argued that college is burdening young people with lifelong debt to the degree that it is stifling their creativity …


Foreign Language Study Coupled With Internship Experience As An Entrée To Professional Opportunities, N. Anthony Brown Jan 2014

Foreign Language Study Coupled With Internship Experience As An Entrée To Professional Opportunities, N. Anthony Brown

Russian Language Journal

Today’s global age presents its share of unique challenges, not the least of which is communication. Whereas in past centuries, fossil fuels played a central role in driving economies and influencing policy decisions, “language is the new oil” in the twenty-first century.1 Some forward thinking individuals and organizations have responded to the times and teamed up with universities and government agencies to develop new and innovative foreign language programs. Consider, for example, the U.S. federally funded National Flagship Language Program that offers upwards of nine months to one year of intensive language instruction in the target language culture and experiential …


Thoughts On High Level Proficiency In Arabic, Russian And English With A Platitudinous Postlude, James Bernhardt Jan 2014

Thoughts On High Level Proficiency In Arabic, Russian And English With A Platitudinous Postlude, James Bernhardt

Russian Language Journal

In the present paper, I look at the top of the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Skill Level Descriptions and critique several of their assumptions. As I do this, I speak for myself and not for the Government in general or the U.S. Department of State in particular. I also do not pretend that my conclusions are not uncontroversial. I also discuss the 2012 ACTFL proficiency standards, but note that we do not train to those standards at the Foreign Service Institute.


Developing Information Literacy Skills In The Beginning Language Classroom: A Case For Webquests, Ekaterina Nemtchinova Jan 2014

Developing Information Literacy Skills In The Beginning Language Classroom: A Case For Webquests, Ekaterina Nemtchinova

Russian Language Journal

To say that the Internet has had an enormous impact on the world of education is to state the obvious, and the world of foreign language education is no exception. The advancement of Internet technologies necessitates the development of a new set of abilities in conjunction with more traditional language competencies: in addition to being able to write compositions and read newspaper articles, foreign language students need to know how to compose e-mail messages, perform searches on the Internet, and use online information. In other words, students have to be information literate to adapt to today’s increasingly complex multimedia environment.


Review: Fundamentals Of The Structure And History Of Russian: A Usage-Based Approach, David J. Birnbaum Jan 2014

Review: Fundamentals Of The Structure And History Of Russian: A Usage-Based Approach, David J. Birnbaum

Russian Language Journal

Fundamentals distinguishes itself from other English-language textbooks about the structure of Russian by being usage-based, which means that the authors eschew underlying abstract forms and ordered rules and instead anchor their synchronic description of Russian phonetics, phonology, and morphology in correspondences and choices among surface forms. (ix, 56ff.) The assertion that “a usage based description […] renders a better picture of [phonetic and orthographic] reality than the generative-based description” (56; bracketed text added) is self-evidently true, and it is hard not to appreciate the difference the authors draw between generative production and what they archly call degeneration in the case …


On Semantic Peculiarities Of Secondary Imperfective Verbs In Russian: Their In/Compatibility With The Notions Of Duration And Completion, Valentina S. Soboleva Jan 2014

On Semantic Peculiarities Of Secondary Imperfective Verbs In Russian: Their In/Compatibility With The Notions Of Duration And Completion, Valentina S. Soboleva

Russian Language Journal

It is a well-known fact that some secondary imperfective verbs in Russian cannot express duration – a notion, ascribed to the imperfective aspect. Of the three, or even four, possible aspectual meanings of the imperfective aspect – duration / progressive continuity, general validity, and repetition – some secondary imperfective verbs are limited to expressing only iterativity, a notion of repetition, embedded in their lexical semantics. The interpretation of the term iterativity in this work is close to the one given by Mehlig (2006) in which the iterative predicate describes an unbounded number of repetitions and the particular meaning is embedded …


Accuracy In Predicting Cross-Lingual Differential Item Functioning (Dif): A Study Of Russian To Kyrgyz Language Test Item Adaptation In The Kyrgyz Republic, Todd Drummond Jan 2014

Accuracy In Predicting Cross-Lingual Differential Item Functioning (Dif): A Study Of Russian To Kyrgyz Language Test Item Adaptation In The Kyrgyz Republic, Todd Drummond

Russian Language Journal

Russian-speaking teachers, assessment specialists, and other educators in Eurasia are frequently tasked with effectively translating and adapting sophisticated educational materials from Russian into non- Slavic languages. While standards, textbooks, and other teaching materials have been adapted from Russian to other Eurasian languages for over a century, a contemporary challenge is the adaptation of highly complex, standardized tests and assessments produced in the Russian language (Drummond and Gabrscek 2012). Because the results of educational assessments are often employed in high stakes decision making, the room for error in the adaptation of cross-lingual tests is small: Capturing exact meaning in all language …


Review: Russian Case Morphology And The Syntactic Categories, John Frederick Bailyn Jan 2014

Review: Russian Case Morphology And The Syntactic Categories, John Frederick Bailyn

Russian Language Journal

David Pesetsky’s Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories (MIT Press, 2013) is one of the most thought-provoking works of theoretical linguistics to appear in many years. It provides a startlingly original analysis of a well-known thorny problem of Russian morpho-syntax, embedding the analysis of that puzzle within a radical rethinking of the role of case in syntactic theory, and taking us on a journey of consequences and extensions that challenge one’s views of many aspects of minimalist theory, including key components of case theory, phrase structure, locality and others. If a monograph is to be judged by its creativity, …


Review: “The Other” In Translation: A Case For Comparative Translation Studies, Sibelan Forrester Jan 2014

Review: “The Other” In Translation: A Case For Comparative Translation Studies, Sibelan Forrester

Russian Language Journal

Alexander Burak’s book “The Other” in Translation does two things: it draws attention to the field of Comparative Translation Discourse Analysis, with reference to numerous concrete examples, and it offers thought provoking and informative discussion of a number of translation situations drawn from the interactions of Russian and Anglophone literature and culture. The book will be especially interesting to students and teachers of Russian at all levels, but it also has a great deal to offer readers from other languages and literatures, especially those with a background in translation studies.


Politeness And Sociocultural Values In American And Russian Cultures Emerging From The Speech Act Of Complaint; Pragmatic Competence Of L2 Learners Of Russian, Beata Gallaher Jan 2014

Politeness And Sociocultural Values In American And Russian Cultures Emerging From The Speech Act Of Complaint; Pragmatic Competence Of L2 Learners Of Russian, Beata Gallaher

Russian Language Journal

In the last two decades, there has been an increasing number of empirical studies on complaints that explore the effects of sociocultural values and linguistic politeness on the language performance of nativeand non-native speakers of English (Kasper 1981; Piotrowska 1987; Olshtain and Weinbach 1987, 1993; Trosborg 1995; Arent 1996; Murphy and Neu 1996; Kraft and Geluykens 2002, 2007; Tanck 2002; Umar 2006; Prykarpatska 2008). However, the empirical data on complaints by Russian native and non-native speakers remains scarce (Olshtain and Weinbach 1993; Gershenson 2003; Kozlova 2004; Perelmutter 2010). The research on complaints is particularly important for studying the impact of …


Review: The Meek One: A Fantastic Story: An Annotated Russian Reader, Cynthia L. Martin Jan 2014

Review: The Meek One: A Fantastic Story: An Annotated Russian Reader, Cynthia L. Martin

Russian Language Journal

Both of these readers are excellent additions to available annotated readers for students of Russian that would be most appropriate after students have completed two full years of Russian.


Review: Pervyi Krug: Russian Full Circle, Snezhana Zheltoukhova Jan 2014

Review: Pervyi Krug: Russian Full Circle, Snezhana Zheltoukhova

Russian Language Journal

Первый круг: Russian Full Circle is the first edition of a beginning Russian textbook that represents a contemporary communicative approach with an emphasis on grammatical and pragmatic competences. Additionally, it offers an open-source ancillary web site. The goals and objectives of the course are clear, challenging and feasible. The materials can be used in a traditional year-long language course or in an intensive summer language program.


Review: The Russian's World: Life And Language, Diane Nemec Ignashev Jan 2014

Review: The Russian's World: Life And Language, Diane Nemec Ignashev

Russian Language Journal

Now in its fourth edition (first published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1974), Gerhart’s and Boyle’s encyclopedic catalogue of “common knowledge” among “Russians” is a classic; readers of this review likely have at least one well-worn edition of The Russian’s World on their bookshelf. Where else under one cover can one find the rules for “gorodki” (240–1), a guide to (Soviet) Russian clothing sizes—“take the bust or chest measurement and divide it in two” (111), or the how-tos on visiting a Russian Orthodox church (270–80)? Abundantly illustrated with no-frills line drawings and black-and-white photographs (of uneven quality), with two color …


Review: Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch Of The East In Russian Fairy Tales, Lisa M. Di Bartolomeo Jan 2014

Review: Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch Of The East In Russian Fairy Tales, Lisa M. Di Bartolomeo

Russian Language Journal

Villains are in, as we see in our Disneyfied multiplexes and musical theater productions, and what better villain to highlight than one who is functionally ambiguous? Given that Baba Yaga has been featured in a Hellboy comic (Mignola, Hellboy, Vol. 3: The Chained Coffin and Others, Dark Horse, 2004) as well as a Scooby Doo episode (“The House of the Nightmare Witch,” Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated, episode 202, airdate July 31, 2012, written by Adam Beechen, directed by Victor Cook), it should come as no surprise that she has finally demanded her own gloriously illustrated book.


Full Issue Jan 2014

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.