This publication serves as an introduction to the section comprising three articles based on presentations at the International Conference “Chinese Linguistics and Sinology” (Russian State University for the Huhe outstanding Soviet and Russian linguist Tan Aoshuang (1931–2017) and brought together many linguists and sinologists. Related articles were selected for this issue, and the introductory remarks provided are designed to set the background for the issues discussed therein.

The paper is devoted to the features of the economic vocabulary functioning in the materials of the Chinese-language media. Media materials reflect the major changes that are occurring in the life of society, primarily in the economic sphere. For China, the development of a market economy is of great importance, which is also reflected in the texts of the mass media. Media materials are sources of new information, their recipients are mainly the general public. Nevertheless, economics is a professional field of activity with its terminological system. The main task of media materials is to transfer information from specialists in this field to non-specialists. Thus, taking into account the abundance of terms, the texts of the economic media enrich the lexicon of listeners or readers. At the same time, an analysis of the texts of the Chinese-language media showed that an active process of terminologization (the transition of commonly used words to the category of terms) is currently underway. This process has an impact on the daily communication of native speakers and is not enough studied on the material of modern Chinese

This article considers phonetic and graphic transformations of Russian loanwords in Chinese. The study comprises an analysis of both proper and common nouns, as well as both loanwords included in dictionaries and those used in the Internet. The data considered make it possible to detect the main trends in the adaptation of Russian consonants in Chinese, as well as to localize the hypothetical influence of the Russian-Chinese pidgin on current loanword adaptation in Mandarin Chinese. It is noted that there is a dramatic discrepancy between the norms of transliteration prescribed by the PRC media and the usage in the Internet. Furthermore, a significant level of specificity of the hieroglyphic N-grams in the loanwords is revealed, compared to the reference corpus of the Chinese texts. The author expects that the results of the work will be useful for specialists both in phonetic typology and in NLP.

The process of latinization of the Chinese language goes back to 1958, when Pinyin alphabet was created. The usage of Pinyin alphabet for a long time was limited only to the sphere of education, where the alphabet acted as an “extra tool” for studying the hieroglyphic script. Nowadays the usage of Pinyin alphabet has become wider: Chinese words in dictionaries are listed in alphabetical order; the alphabet is used for typing hieroglyphs in word processors; words written in latin letters are widely used in Chinese Internet communication, etc. While some of such “literal” words currently used in Chinese Internet communication are borrowings from other languages (mostly from English), this article is focused on wholly Chinese words that are written only in Pinyin alphabet without tone diacritics. Is it possible that writing in Pinyin alphabet will replace the traditional hieroglyphic writing? Today it seems absurd, but time will show.

Kabardian (Northwest Caucasian) displays two associative plural constructions. The first pattern exploits the suffix which is also used for the expression of additive plural: it is added to proper names and normally provides a reference to the family of the focal referent. Within the second pattern, a specific associative plural marker follows a syntactically autonomous nominal. The latter pattern possesses several specific properties: the associative plural marker governs the case of the focal nominal, which can be represented even by inanimate, non-specific and coordinate NPs. To describe the Kabardian associative plural system, we would suggest using not only a simplified version of Animacy Hierarchy (as is often done in typological literature) but involving several other hierarchies including those of definiteness/referentiality, number individuation, and morphosyntactic autonomy.

The paper analyses data of automated evaluation of syntactical complexity of scholarly texts from four comparable corpora – two of expert texts and two of learner texts – in two subject areas. The research applied two different computer tools – UDPipe parser and AntConc set of programs. The following conclusions were made: – Expert scholarly texts demonstrated high clausal and phrasal complexity, and its level was higher in Business Studies than in Economics. – Clausal complexity in expert texts was much higher than in student texts, while phrasal complexity was at about the same level as, or even slightly lower than that of students. The largest difference was attested for genitive construction with preposition of, which was 1.7 times as frequent in student texts in both subject areas as in expert texts. The results contradict the conclusion of the prior research that with the growth in proficiency clausal complexity decreases, while phrasal complexity grows

This paper considers such expressive words in Russian as onomatopoeic verbal interjections (bukh ‘bang’, stuk ‘knock’, bul’ ‘plop’). First of all, it focuses on the reasons for using those words. This study suggests that native speakers of Russian may deliberately prefer those linguistic units over words from other classes (nouns, verbs or adverbs). It happens when such factors as Zipf’s law and the principles of iconicity and economy in grammar come into play. Secondly, the article claims that while morphologically simple, syntactically mobile and with transparent onomatopoeia-based meaning, those words are not that primitive. Onomatopoeic verbal interjections are capable of conveying multiple shades of meaning due to such diachronic processes as lexical shifts and extensions they have undergone. That kind of qualities enable speakers to imply more than they want to explicitly utter under certain conditions. And finally, using corpus data the research distinguishes such pragmatic functions of those linguistic units (bukh ‘bang’, stuk ‘knock’, bul’ ‘plop’) as quasi-referential, emotive, phatic, poetic and metalinguistic function.

Vladimir Zinovyevich Sannikov, a well-known Russian linguist, passed away on December 18, 2019. He was the author of a number of works in the history of the Old Russian language, Russian morphology and Russian word formation, linguistic statistics, natural language processing, and the theory of speech acts.