The Department of Comparative Analysis of Languages

• Department staff

The linguistics of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX century was mostly engaged in comparativistics of kindred languages (Indo-European in the first place). The purpose of these studies was the reconstruction of the proto-language, which other languages and groups of languages (for example, Slavic, Romance and German groups) developed from coming to a parting of the ways. However, the linguistics of the XX century is focused on semantics-typological approach, not a historical one. The core of this approach consists of revelation of similarities and differences in the way different languages (genetically kindred and unkindred) reflect the reality, which speakers of these languages exist in.

In order to reveal the specific features of a reality reflection in one or another language, all languages should be reduced to a common denominator. In comparativistics such a "denominator" was sounds and their combinations. In typological linguistics it was meanings and their formation peculiarities in a language. The department pays primary attention to the semantic approach to the Russian language to separate compulsory expressed meanings from optional, regular from irregular; to set the spread of particular semantic zones (gender, productivity or frequency rate of an action, comparative or superlative forms, etc.) that receive its specific formulation in Russian and other languages.

There is a well-known fact that if one doesn't know any foreign languages, he has no notion about his mother tongue. The richness of the Russian language, with the use of which it is possible to express the most subtle and difficult shades and combinations of diverse thoughts and feelings, is obvious against the backdrop of other languages.

The ability to interpret any text in Russian deeply and exactly is necessary not only for a professional translator, but for anyone who wants to bring his personality in line with an ideal called an intellectual person.

Has everyone come across "word torments", an unsatisfied desire to tell something that overflows one’s mind and heart using the mother tongue, something that was already brilliantly expressed in a foreign language? One modern poet told: "The Russian speech is my only wealth. It is necessary for the word to match the thought in such a way, as if they are just the same".

Semantic interpretation and creation of texts in the Russian language, both in respect of the fundamental theory and at the level of the specific semantic analysis and synthesis, - are the subjects the department of comparative analysis of Russian and other languages deals with.

The department offers students an obligatory course with a traditional title "The Russian language and speech culture", however, the academic content is not connected with usual classifications of lexical and grammatical facts and phenomena, but with the establishment of procedures providing adequate comprehension of texts in the Russian language by an addressant and an addressee. Moreover, the academic content is connected with the creation of texts in the Russian language relevant to a plan of a speaker and a writer. The most important task of this course is the establishment of those features of structuring and thought expression which exist in Russian contrary to other languages.

The system of special courses and seminars helps to understand a specific role of various language levels of the Russian language (lexicon, morphology, syntax) in structuring and formulation of the content, which can be expressed by the same means or by means of other levels in other languages. Relying on the experience of creation and usage of the Russian-language dictionaries and translation dictionaries that establish interlingual compliances at lexical level, the staff of the department is at work upon the creation of such a description of the Russian language system which can form a part of mutual grammar of any foreign language and the Russian language.

The Department Chairman, professor, Doctor of Philology, Miloslavsky Igor Grigoryevich.