It is well-known that the category of person is considered one of the main grammatical categories of verb. The European linguistic tradition singled this category out from its beginning. Some European and American grammars of Japanese recognized the grammatical category of person (B.Y. Chamberlain, A. Rose-Inness, T. Navron-Voytinskaya). However the categories of etiquette (politeness) are mixed with person. Japanese has the developed system of the designation of social attitudes between the speaker and other persons (interlocutors or objects of speech). The cause of the confusion is the influence of the grammatical system of the European languages on the investigators. However the opposition of the forms of 1st person and 2^nd person exists in the imperative, and such forms are numerous: kake ‘write!’ (rude), o-kaki kudasai ‘write!’ (polite), kakoo ‘let us write’. The opposition of personal pronouns of all the persons exist too although they are not very common in Japanese.

The restructuring in the system of verb tenses, which took place in the separate history of the Slavic languages, led in a number of languages to the loss of grammatical person indicators s in some predicative models and to the activation of impersonal and subjectless sentences. If in the Proto-Slavic and Old Russian languages in all forms of the past tenses the meaning of the person was present, then in the Russian language, in place of the four past tenses, one perfect was preserved, in which the link present time from the verb *byti, which explicitly expressed the meaning of the person, was gradually lost. The linguistic consciousness of the speakers got used to the indistinctness of the grammatical person, which led to the emergence of structurally diverse and widely used non-subjective sentences. According to the repertoire of models of subjectless sentences, the Slavic languages are close to each other, but differ in the activity of the models. The occurrence of infinitive and mononuclear sentences with a verbal predicate in the 2nd person singular increases in the direction from Slovenian to Polish and further to Russian. In the aspect of areal-diachronic differences between the Slavic languages, the considered facts show that in the direction from west to east (from Slovene to Polish and further to Russian) there is a typological tendency to weaken the inflectional nature of the grammatical category of a person and to blur the basic meanings of a person.

The article analyzes Russian explanatory sentences, understood as a semantic type characterized by a combination of dictum and modus propositions. Each of them has a number of constructive embodiments, the technique of their connection varies, which generally determines a significant range of explanatory constructions – from a simple sentence (with and without introductory words) to a complex one – complex and non-union. Observations are being made on the language of the Russian media. The object of attention is the position of the modus subject. It is revealed that it is replaced in media texts not only by designations of persons (pronouns or personal nouns), which is trivial, but also by three types of non-personal nouns – the names of media institutions, power structures and social institutions. Such facts, illustrated by examples from the media texts of a number of publications (Kommersant, Izvestia, Fontanka.ru, Ogonyok, etc.), indicate that the explanatory construction in media speech opens up for stylistics, in particular, for regular action of metonymy (author / editorial board, authority / its locus, etc.). This circumstance is interpreted against the background of general judgments about the gender of metonymy and metonymic thinking in the modern media sphere.

The subject of the analysis is the adverbs «вполуха» and «вполглаза». The purpose of the study is to analyze the metaphorical model “bodily perception – social communication” based on the material of these adverbs. The theoretical basis is the work on the metaphorical potential of somatisms, on the source sphere of the “human body” for structuring a new area. Issues under consideration: metaphorical transition of quantitative and qualitative adverbs motivated by somatism from the sphere of perception to the sphere of social communication; interaction with the intensity/gradality and the communicative category “politeness” in the lexical and semantic structure of adverbs. The morphemic component “впол- (half)” is considered as a gradator. It is assumed that there is a social stereotype of communication – (a) the zero mark “do not look, do not listen” as evidence of the lack of communication and (b) the ordinary indicator “to look, to listen” as a common communicative norm. It is demonstrated on the speech material that adverbs converge in terms of intensity, forming a graduated binomial, which leads to a violation of semantic compatibility. The speech activity of adverbs with reference to the data of the National Corpus of the Russian language is considered. The main “semantic shades” (additional meanings) are revealed. It is concluded that the word вполуха is more often updated in the context of the evaluation of the parameter “politeness”. Lexical and syntactic means that mark the pejorative semantics of adverbs in the text are revealed. It is proved that the functioning in speech of adverbs вполуха and вполглаза demonstrates the interaction of the semantics of intensity and axiology (assessment on an ethical basis with the vector of pejorativeness).

The article is devoted to the analysis of the influence of international languages on each other at the level of cognitive structures. The paper considers the mistakes made by the interpreters of international organizations in the design of the left and right context of the preposition in the face of, and it is concluded that the reason for such errors is the wrong choice of the conceptual base of the preposition in the conditions of competition between two metaphorical cognitive models – CONFRONTATION and APPEAL (with a model COURT). The base imposes referential, morphological and semantic restrictions on the filling of the left and right context of the preposition in the face of. The study of the materials of the National Corpus of the Russian Language, including the historical corpus, showed that the cognitive model APPEAL was more often activated by those who wrote in Church Slavonic, and then in Russian, then the model CONFRONTATION. The established discursive practice ensured the dominance of the cognitive model APPEAL in cognitive structures of modern Russian speakers. An analysis of the use of in the face of and face à, as well as other phraseological units with face in English and face in French, showed that the cognitive model CONFRONTATION is more significant for their speakers. Currently, under the influence of the languages of global communication in the Russian language, there is an increase in the compatibility of the preposition in the face of and an increase in the importance of the cognitive model CONFRONTATION.

The article deals with the semantic uncertainty of the phraseologism to lose face in the modern Russian language. The purpose of the study is to establish the evaluative characteristics of “loss of face” in the context of other moral “losses” (lose shame, lose conscience). The work was carried out on the material of explanatory and phraseological dictionaries of the Russian language with the use of data from the National Corpus of the Russian Language. In the course of the study, methods and operational procedures were used, including contextual analysis of phraseological unit syntagmatics, elements of component and frame analysis, methods of equivalent substitutions and context transformations. The study found that the “loss of face” in the Russian language occupies a special position among other significant moral losses. “To lose conscience, shame” denotes the loss of morally valuable qualities denoted by these words, and is understood unambiguously in this regard. The polysemy of the word face leads to the fact that the phraseological units lose face can convey a whole range of meanings, among which the main ones are the following: loss of individuality, distinctive personality traits, loss of reputation and respect in the eyes of others, loss of control over oneself, one’s emotions. The evaluative characteristics of the phraseological unit to lose face also differ from the evaluation of “loss of shame” or “loss of conscience”. “Loss of shame (conscience)” receives public censure; “loss of face” is negatively evaluated and painfully realized by the subject himself.

This article discusses the Russian nominations of persons that are diminutives that have lost their diminutiveness, for example, tenant, bespectacled, beginner, girl. Some of these units at different times supplanted their usual correlates, cf. “I on spokojno uchilsya, etot bezzabotnyj ochkar’…” (“And he calmly studied, this carefree bespectacled…”), Boris Gorbatov, “My Generation” 1933. Lost correlates can be identified with the help of dictionaries and sources. The other part continues to compete with them, cf. a competing grandfather-grandfather pair. In the replacement of nominations of persons by diminutive correlates, certain tendencies can be identified: such a replacement correlates with a certain semantics of denotation. Specifically, the vocabulary under consideration refers to terms of kinship, designations of children, women (cf. the word granddaughter, which is included in all these groups), persons with a reduced status for one reason or another (cf. beggar). For the terms of kinship, designations of children and women, one can assume endearment, including, perhaps, etiquette, as a shade of expression (connotation) that is lost now, but inherent in them in the past. For the designations of persons with reduced status, one can assume an initial condescension and disdain.

The article is devoted to pronoun complexes on the base of personal pronouns, which at present traditionally are not usually singled out as autonomic language units. Nevertheless many things indicate their particular status in the vocabulary as well as in lexical system. So this way the status of such formation (created on the base of personal pronouns) as the units of the speech are confirmed by constancy of their function’s spheres, the connection to communication’s situation, frequency of their use and by some other factors. Among the analyzed units in the article are presented pronoun complexes on the base of pronoun subject, units of symbolic character, popular expressions (pithy sayings), phraseology of syntactical type etc. There is marked the role of units of such kind for the stylistic shape of speech and their value in the connection to ethnolinguistic tradition. There is underlined that such pronoun units’ inscription to dictionaries as a standing by itself vocables or subvocables are mostly expedient and advisable. There is used also comparison stratum of lexis – functional correspond units from the near related Slavic area.

The article deals with the language entities: lexemes, phraseological units grammar categories syntactic constructions that can change their meanings in the speech situation when they are related to the category of person. That means that the nuances, meanings or connotations can emerge when they concern the Speaker or the Hearer. The article reveals such changes when it goes about evaluation – the sense of appreciation or disgust. In fact some lexemes or phraseological units are hardly possible when used with the first person, e.G. Ya krasotka (‘I am a beauty’). Still the pragmatic studies make it possible to reveal the intentions that appear by such usage. There can be sarcasm, but also remorse and some other intentions that are analyzed in this article. The same analysis is provided for the usage of lexemes and phraseological units in the context of the 2^nd Person i/e/ connected with the Hearer. Not only negative but also positive evaluation is taken into consideration. Some cases of evaluation implemented into grammar categories are also analyzed/ These are forms of the Conditional Mood expressing wish (the meaning of Optative). The difference between evaluation expressed by the basic meaning of lexemes and grammemes and that in connotations is revealed. The conclusion is formulated about the cultural specifics of evaluation expressed by connotations that emerge in some pragmatic contexts connected with the Speaker and the Hearer.

The article is devoted to the problems of intercultural communication in the field of speech etiquette. On the example of communicative failures of Russian and Iranian students, the differences in the etiquette models of Russian and Persian cultures are considered. The article reveals the main provisions of speech etiquette, the basic principles of the theory of Politeness, general and specific characteristics of polite communicative behavior, the features of speech etiquette in Persian linguistic culture and its differences from Russian linguistic culture. Special attention is paid to the “surprised person”, that is, a person who has fallen into a foreign cultural environment for him as an object of study of etiquette inconsistencies of speech etiquette compared systems. The analyzed material is a collection of real stories of ten Iranian students who got into awkward communication situations during their stay in Russia, and the stories of their friends who got into awkward situations in Iran. These situations are associated with the peculiarities of the etiquette behavior of men and women, with everyday etiquette superstitions, etc. The study of the differences between Russian and Persian etiquette is considered useful both from a theoretical and practical point of view.

The conference was devoted to linguistics and methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language to adults at various stages of language acquisition. Among the participants were professors and researchers of the Russian language and teachers of Russian as a foreign language from RSUH, Pushkin IRL, The University of Bologna, Sevastopol and Tver Universities and Liden&Denz Intercultural Institute of Languages. The topics for two thematic sessions are listed on the webpage of RSUH.