The main focus of this study is the analysis of negotiation of the use of the heritage language and the negotiation of an interethnic identity within multilingual contexts in which the heritage language is Uzbek, Russian and English. The qualitative sociolinguistic method was used in the study to obtain the data by means of questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and naturalistic data of families’ interaction from the families of Tashkent and Jizzakh cities. The results indicate that the younger generations are increasingly dominated by Russian and English language thanks to the influence of education, globalisation and the aspirations of the future, with Uzbek language remaining as a sign of cultural identity and intergenerational continuity. This study draws attention to the intricate balancing act between maintenance of heritage language use and more contemporary multilingual mobility in post-Soviet Uzbek culture.
On closer inspection, three operations that translation studies, terminology and linguopoetics have traditionally separated out prove to be variants of the same phenomenon: the negotiation of culturally indexed meaning across linguistic boundaries. Drawing on a deliberately heterogeneous corpus – German renderings of Babur’s Boburnoma, French and Uzbek sport vocabulary (including football tactical neologisms and the lexis of belt-wrestling and pétanque) and hydropoetonyms and phono-graphostylistic markers across German, French and Uzbek literary tradition – the article argues that these three domains operate as interlocking layers of a single transfer mechanism rather than as parallel descriptive fields. The argument is based on an extension of frame-semantic geometry: each transferred unit can be placed on a nucleus–periphery gradient and the depth of its cultural anchoring determines whether it will be preserved, naturalised or stripped of its meaning in the transfer. Uzbek turns out to be a language that imports sport vocabulary wholesale and exports culture-bound lexemes (kurash, halol, gʻirrom) that are resistant to translation; French shows a greater normative pressure to indigenise loans; German Boburnoma translation favours descriptive paraphrase, trading periphery for referential clarity. Hydropoetonyms are in a third position, in which the prosodic-phonetic substrate of the source is structurally untransferable. The suggestion, which challenges a branch of translation studies that continues to think in terms of word-for-word equivalence, is that adequacy should be evaluated based on a multi-layered model where the terminology, poetic form and cultural references are co-constitutive.
This paper investigates the semantic network of Lithuanian verbs with a prefix pra-, which originates from the preposition pro ‘past, through’ and retains a prototypical spatial meaning of motion past or alongside. Drawing on a corpus-based analysis of 504 prefixed verbs from the LithuanianWaC (2014), the study identifies 17 distinct meanings, ranging from spatial configurations (ALONGSIDE, THROUGH, OPENING, SIDEWAYS, PATH) to more abstract and metaphorical senses (LOSS, FAILURE, DISAPPEARANCE, ABILITY, PERDURATIVE, INCHOATIVE, DIMINUTIVE, etc.). The framework of cognitive linguistics provides theoretical grounding: meanings are treated as motivated and interconnected. The results reveal that prefixal meanings form a radial network with a prototypical spatial core and metaphorical or functional extensions at the periphery. The study also evaluates Laura Janda’s semantic overlap hypothesis concerning natural perfectives, showing that Lithuanian pra- derivatives often conform to this principle: compatibility arises where the prefix meaning overlaps with that of the base verb. Overall, the analysis highlights the polysemous and gradient nature of prefixal semantics in Lithuanian and underscores the role of embodiment and metaphor in prefixal meaning extension. Future research should further explore prefix-verb interaction and semantic overlap across other Lithuanian prefixes.
This article examines discussions of singular ‘they’ in public media to better understand discourses surrounding this feature of English currently undergoing grammatical change, and how linguistic concepts are communicated to the public. The data is a corpus of linguistics communication (lingcomm) about singular ‘they’, comprised of media that engages non-academic audiences with linguistics. Through using this lingcomm framing, we can observe how concepts in linguistics and gender are disseminated to a broader audience. A thematic analysis found a strong focus on historical evidence of generic singular ‘they’ to legitimise all uses of singular ‘they’ in contemporary standard English, with long-standing generic singular ‘they’ being conflated with the newer nonbinary singular ‘they’. This discourse portrays a static view of language that reinforces prescriptive ideals of traditional language use and undervalues the contributions of marginalised groups to language.
This article presents a socio-onomastic comparison of the personal naming systems of Uzbek and French and examines the role of personal names in transmitting cultural memory across two linguistic communities. The study is based on a corpus of approximately 600 given names from civil registration documents, literary texts and contemporary public discourse. The analysis focuses on the etymological and cultural meaning of given names, their morphological structure, gender marking and the phonological adaptation of borrowed name material. The results show that there are substantial differences between the two systems. The etymological meanings of given names are often transparent and related to nature, religion and traditional culture in Uzbekistan, while French names are more related to Christian and historical naming traditions. Uzbek anthroponyms also exhibit productive compounding patterns, while French names are mostly suffixed. The study shows that personal names are not only an identifier of identity but also a linguistic vehicle of collective cultural memory from generation to generation.
