In 2015 we celebrate twenty years of the Moscow Linguistic Journal (MLJ) and fifty years of the “Meaning - Text” Theory. The editorial treats the influence of these two events on the composition of this issue of the MLJ.

This paper demonstrates main directions in scholarly research of the article in the Persian language, from the late 18th century to the present day. The sources of this survey include grammars and other studies of Persian that were published in Great Britain, Germany, France and Russia.

The paper deals with the semantic properties of of the most common and specific forms of Japanese language - the so called representation form with the suffix - tari. Depending on the context this form can express both neglect and courtesy, but all these pragmatic effects are only derived from the main meaning of vagueness, which «tari form» contains.

The object of this study are the letters included to Ferdowsi’s epic poem Shahnameh (X c.), written in farsi-dari. The author tries to trace the influence of both pre-Islamic (III-VII c.) and early Islamic (VII-X c.) epistolary traditions. On the structure of the introductory and concluding parts of letters in the poem. The formal structure of the letters from Shahnameh is compared to the existing Middle Persian epistolary texts of III-VII c. including the letter-writing manual of the VI c. and the texts from the Arab-Persian tradition.

This paper presents an analysis of phonological systems of Circassian dia lects in Turkey as compared to Circassian phonological systems in Russia. This analysis is based on data from the XIX century (Circassian dictionaries by L. Loewe, Turkish Mavlid) and new dictionaries written in the new Circassian system of writing based on Turkish alphabet as well as on previous phonological research.

The category of inalienable possession in Russian can be discovered in models with a zero-suffix that describe the structure of compound Adjectives and Adjectives with prefix без- . These models have restricted productiveness in Russian. Some semantic and phonetic restrictions on their functioning are discussed. It is supposed that the model in question was developed in determining the most important components of the human image.

A universal list of surface-syntactic relations [SSyntRels] is compiled based on the idea that a SSyntRel r is “the same” in different languages if and only if this r has the same set of core functions in all these languages (just like the nominative in different languages is still a nominative since it is used everywhere for nomination - its core function; its other functions might be different). A few remarks are formulated on the Deep-Syntactic structure: 12 universal deep-syntactic relations are briefly introduced, and a list of 30 fictitious lexemes is presented (they are used in DSyntSs to represent syntactic constructions carrying lexical-type meanings). After a concise characterization of SSyntRels, the paper offers a list of 112 SSyntRels known in world languages: subordinate and coordinate; the subordinate SSyntRels are divided into clause-level and phrase-level SSyntRels, with further subdivision into valence-controlled vs. non-valence-controlled and then into Noun Phrase SSyntRels, Adpositional Phrase SSyntRels, etc.

The paper deals with the history of reconstruction and interpretation of Cius’ inscription (CIL III 7494 = ILS 770). It was created during the war conducted by roman emperor Valens against Goths in 367-369. Only a half of text has remained, and so a number of hypotheses have been advanced to reconstruct the lost part. Reconstruction proposed by Theodor Mommsen in 1882 enjoys high prestige to this day. Although some efforts to rewrite it were attempted (supported e.g. by H. Dessau), they didn’t gain general acceptance. The author suggests new arguments for rewriting of Mommsens reconstruction.

In this article author analyzes how Apollonius Rhodius uses homeric epithets characterize heroes’s weapon to give additional features to the images of Argonauts.

The life of Sylvia Belokrinickaja is shown in the context of political and social history of Russia in the 1930-1980s. The author uses the family documents and records of friendly conversations with her hero. The supplement contains the bibliography of Belokrinickaja’s scientific works and translations.