Scientific life. Congresses, conferences, and symposia

From July 5 to 9, 2003, the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University hosted the International Conference on Languages and Literatures of South Asian Countries - ICOSALL-5, organized by the ISAA Department of Indian Philology. The first conference on South Asian Languages ICOSAL-1 (International Conference on South Asian Languages) was held by the ISAA Department of Indian Philology at Moscow State University in July 1997. Well-known American, French and Indian linguists participated in it along with Russian ones. Based on the conference materials, the collection "Vagbharati"was published in the Moscow State University Publishing House in 1998. Together with the articles of the conference participants, it includes the works of well-known linguists who, for one reason or another, were unable to participate in ICOSAL-1.

At the final meeting of the 1997 conference, it was decided to make ICOSAL-1 a "chamber" version of SALA (South Asia Language Analysis), an annual international conference that has been held mainly in the United States, sometimes in India, since 1978.The name ICOSAL was also chosen due to its consonance with SALA. Subsequent conferences (ICOSAL 2, 3, 4) devoted to the linguistic study of Indian languages were held in India, respectively in Patiala (Punjab), Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) and Annamalainagar (Tamil Nadu).

Before the fifth conference, the organizers decided to expand its thematic base, and it returned to the alma mater, to the Department of Indian Philology of the ISAA at Moscow State University, in an updated capacity: unlike the previous ones, the topics of this conference were not only linguistic, but also literary problems of the South Asian subcontinent. There was also a corresponding modification of the name: the conference was called ICOSALL (International Conference of South Asian Languages and Literatures).

The opening ceremony of the conference was attended as honorary guests by representatives of the embassies of three neighboring countries of South Asia: Satbir Singh, Adviser to the Embassy of India in Russia and Director of the J. Nehru Cultural Center at the Embassy; L. P. Sharma, Ambassador of Nepal to the Russian Federation, and M. B. Wijekun, Ambassador of Sri Lanka.

At the general session that followed, the reports of three foreign participants of the conference devoted to the problems of theoretical and applied linguistics and literary studies were read. H. H. Hock (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA) made a presentation on " South Asia and Turkic Languages: Contacts in Central Asia?" Proposed in the gipo report-

page 171

The hypothesis of interlingual contacts in Central Asia in the first centuries of the new era has much in common with the hypothesis expressed in 1976 by the famous linguist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago K. Masika about the influence of phonetic and grammatical systems of the Turkic languages on the languages of South Asia. Unlike K. Masiki, the author attributes interlanguage contacts to a much earlier period, i.e., to the first centuries of the New Era, when Indo-Aryan Prakrit (Gandhari), Eastern Iranian Sogdian and Saka, classical Tibetan, Tocharian and Turkic languages interacted intensively. While K. Masika wrote about the Turkic influence on Indo-Iranian languages, H. Hock suggests the opposite direction of influence. The report presents various facts that could confirm or refute both the presented hypothesis and the assumption of a similar but independent development of syntactically similar systems (with the SOV order). In the report of Tej K. Bhatia (Syracuse University, New York, USA)" Women as subjects and objects of image in rural India advertising " both linguistic features of the advertising text and important psycholinguistic factors influencing the perception of advertising in the Indian village were considered. Italian researcher D. Rossella (Universities of Perugia and Milan) represented literary studies at the plenary session. Her post "Indian Love Lyrics as a Database for Cataloging Plots, Themes and Characters" was a presentation of a computer database for studying classical love lyrics. Based on the material of several poetry anthologies, including Shataki o Lyubov ' Amaru (ca. IX c.), D. Rossella created a catalog of themes, motifs, plots, situations, characters, the most frequently encountered images and poetic ornaments, which can be used as a search engine and can serve as a base for statistical research (for example, to identify the frequency of a particular word), and also allows you to simplify and formalize the analysis of individual poems or lines of poetry to some extent.

The conference included sections "Linguistics"and" Literary Studies".

The Language Section held 7 meetings, where 18 reports were read. Most of them were devoted to actual problems of morphology and syntax of South Asian languages.

The theoretical basis of the joint report of Kashi Vali (Syracuse and Cornell UNTS, USA) and O. N. Cole (Indian Institute of Linguistic Research, Delhi, India), as well as the report of E. Davison (University of Iowa, USA), was the theory of principles and parameters and its logical continuation-the minimalist theory of language theory. Chomsky.

Kashi Wali and O. N. Kohl in their report "Double case marking in Kashmiri Possessives: a different view of the problem" considered the problem of choosing an interpretative scheme for Kashmiri genitive-post-syllabic determinative syntagmas. What was proposed in the article by J. R. R. Tolkien: Payne's (1995) simple solution: the possessive postposition determines the choice of inflection in the subordinate name, and the resulting adjective - possessive syntagma syntactically agrees with the defined one - the authors reject it as "traditional". Instead, we use a model based on the so-called "determinant phrases", developed by S. Abney for English syntax in 1987. According to the authors, such a description, which denies postpositions to agree as such, allows us to integrate Kashmiri possessives into a more general language theory of argumentative-adjunct units capable of parametric variation (a particular manifestation of which in this case is considered to be the "traditional" ability to syntactically agree in Kashmiri possessive postpositions).

E. Davison in her report "Hierarchical structure and linear order: Correlative sentences in Hindi/Urdu" considered the structure and semantics of three types of determinative subordinate clauses in Hindi-Urdu, which differ in the linear order of parts: determinative subordinate clauses preceding the main, following it and included in the main. In contrast to Sanskrit, where relative and correlative sentences are connected by a compositional connection and a relative sentence allows a special question to be asked to a relative pronoun, in Hindi-Urdu, a relative and correlative sentence are connected by a subordinate connection, a special question can be asked only to the correlative pronoun of the main sentence, but not to the relative pronoun of the determinative subordinate clause. From the point of view of communicative syntax, a relative pronoun

page 172

the subordinate clause preceding the main clause is usually the topic, and the relative pronoun of the main clause is the focus of the utterance.

The report of P. Hook (University of Michigan, USA) and Xin-Xin liang (University of Virginia, USA) "Intensive verbs in Chinese and Indo-Aryan languages" continued the topic of language conjunctions, which was discussed at the plenary session of the report of X. The Hawk. Like H. Hock, the authors of the report relied on the works of K. Masiki, a classic in the field of areal linguistics. The absence of intensive verbs in Chinese and in the languages of Southeast Asia served as one of the arguments for K. Masiki in favor of singling out the Indo-Turan language union, which included the languages of South and Central Asia, united, among other common features, by an important isogloss: using the so-called "intensive verbs"in them. In 2001, K. Masika revised the previously proposed hypothesis, as he found service elements in the Chinese language that are extremely similar to intensive verbs in the languages of South and Central Asia. The report examined the semantic and paradigmatic characteristics of complex verbs in Chinese in comparison with intensive verbs in Hindi as a representative of Indo-Aryan languages. We compared such characteristics of complex verbs as their productivity, frequency of use, optional use of the auxiliary verb, the ability to express the meanings inherent in "phase" verbs: "start", "stop", etc., the ability to express volitiveness, their preferred use in subordinate clauses with the meaning of "fear" ("as if not"). and in the restrictive subordinate clauses of time ("not yet"). As a result of comparing complex verbs in Chinese and Hindi, the authors found a set of parallels in their use, sufficient to agree with Masiki's point of view: complex verbs should not be considered an isoglossus that delimits the Indo-Turan language union, although complex verbs in Chinese are less productive and less systematic compared to "intensive verbs" in the Russian language. languages of South and Central Asia.

K. Masika, whose ideas were repeatedly returned to by the speakers, sent to the conference the text of his report "Violations of the standard word order SOV in Telugu and other languages of India", dedicated to new trends in the synactic development of Dravidian languages in comparison with the Indo-Aryan languages of India. He showed that in languages with the SOV order, there are usually two "focus" positions: the preposition (if the focus is the direct complement) and the position at the end of the sentence after the verb (if the focus is the subject). While in Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages, the possibility of placing the subject in the final position in a sentence is limited to the spoken language, mainly dialogic contexts, in Telugu, changing the order of SOV to OVS becomes statistically predominant not only in colloquial dialogues, but also in many narrative texts of the literary language.

L. V. Khokhlova's (ISAA) report "Syntactic features of poetic texts in Hindi", which is much more modest in terms of the breadth of the research material, was also devoted to the problems of word order. It noted that the prohibitions on changing the order of parts within the nominal and verbal components of a sentence, postulated by T. Mohanan (1990; 1994) and Miriam Bat (1995) as universal for Hindi, are universal only for prose texts, but can be violated in verse. Poetic texts also do not comply with the restrictions that exist for prose on the list of nominal groups that can control the adverbial participle.

Reports by V. P. Liperovsky (IB RAS) and A. A. Sigorsky (MGIMO(U) MFA of the Russian Federation) dealt with the peculiarities of actant coding and verbal agreement in Hindi and its dialects. The first speaker considered these problems in synchrony, the second-in diachronic perspective.

V. P. Liperovsky's report "Some aspects of marking actants in modern braj" discussed the features of marking agent and patient, as well as the rules of verbal agreement in six basic constructions characteristic of both literary Hindi and modern Braj: active-subject, active-object, active-neutral, inactive-object, inactive- neutral and affective-object. The author's syntactic analysis was based on a rich linguistic material that was first introduced into scientific use.

page 173

A. A. Sigorsky's report "Case, voice and ergativity in the history of Hindi and its dialects" described the evolution of the case system and the history of the development of the ergative construction in Western and eastern dialects of Hindi. The subject properties of agent and patient in constructions with a transitive verb in perfective tenses were also considered.

Report by I. T. Prokofieva (MGIMO University) MFA of the Russian Federation) "Correlations between verb semantics and syntax in modern Bengali" was devoted to the analysis of syntactic semantics components relevant for the Bengali verb. The author has identified seven classes of verbs based on various combinations of the following typical meanings: transitivity/intransitivity, volitivity/involitivity, efficiency/efficiency, limit/non-limit. Various syntactic properties of each of the groups were also described: the ability to passivize, form causatives, form modal constructions and genitive constructions with a verbal noun (gerund).

Problems of grammatical semantics were considered in the report of D. V. Sichinava (MSU) "Past tense markers in Santali (in typological perspective)". He analyzed the peculiarities of using three indicators of the Santali language (Munda group), expressing, according to traditional descriptions, the meaning of "past tense". It was shown that two of them are characterized by the meaning of not just "past tense", but "designation of a situation that is irrelevant in the present". In contexts where the semantics of "breaking" with the present are not specifically emphasized, these indicators are usually not used. Indicators of this type are noted in many languages of the world; typologically, the combination of these values with the plusquamperfect, as well as with the meaning of the conditional mood (both of which occur in Santali) is well known. The third indicator (aorist), according to the Sichinawa hypothesis, also initially had a similar range of meanings (some of them are relict preserved in the modern language).

A diachronic study of the morphology and syntax of Indo-Aryan languages was also devoted to the report of L. Kulikov (University of Leiden, the Netherlands)"Categories of valence transformations in ancient Indo-Aryan in a diachronic perspective". The report examined the destruction in ancient Indo-Aryan of the Indo-European middle voice, which was a marker of passive, anticausative, reflexive and reciprocal. The earliest Vedic texts contain only remnants of the original system of the middle voice, special detransitivation markers appear, such as the passive suffix-ub, reflexive pronouns tanuu, aatman, etc. Simultaneously with the destruction of some, ancient Indo-Aryan shows a rapid development of other categories, such as passive with the suffix-ub-or causatives with the suffix-aua-.

A diachronic study of lexical semantics was presented in the joint report of B. A. Zakharyin and I. V. Khokhlova (ISAA) "Evolution of the semantic field" movement in space "(verbs with the meaning "to fall" and "to fly"). in the history of Indo-Aryan". It showed the ways of development of the complex of corresponding verb meanings, starting from Vedic and Sanskrit, through the Middle Indian languages to modern New Indian (Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati). It was noted, in particular, that the most significant transformations affected the reflexes of the Sanskrit verb pat, which was characterized by an extremely wide range of meanings (from "fly" and "fall" to "jump", "rush", etc.P.) in ancient times. This verb retained a fairly wide range of meanings in Gujarati, but lost most of them, "passing" them to other verbs - both assuming archaic prototypes, and newly formed ones-in Hindi and Punjabi. A more thorough study of the semantics of verb lexemes is necessary, but this preliminary analysis suggests that Sanskrit was one of the languages that combine "fly" and"fall". However, for modern Hindi, Gujarati and Punjabi, such a typological reference is not significant, since in the verbs of these languages the meanings of "fall", "fly" and "jump" are distributed according to different signifiers.

The problems of unification of terminology in the description of South Asian languages were discussed in the reports of J. P. Dimri (Hyderabad) and O. G. Ultsiferov (MGIMO(U)). MINISTRY OF Foreign Affairs OF THE Russian Federation).

In his report "Redefining Panini terms in Grammatical works on the Hindi language", J. P. Dimri analyzed the use of Panini terms sangyaa, sarvanaama, visesana, kriya and some others in the grammars of modern Indian linguists and in the Hindi grammar of the Russian linguist S. M. Dymshits. The author came to the conclusion that in the works of Indian scientists,

page 174

For linguists, Panini's terms were reinterpreted in accordance with the Latin grammatical tradition, and for S. M. Dymshits ' grammar, they were reinterpreted in accordance with the Russian one. J. P. Dimry suggested returning to the original meaning of Panini terms.

O. G. Ultsiferov in his report "Old and new concepts in Hindi grammatical descriptions" proposed a detailed system of grammatical terms for describing literary Hindi.

In addition to morphology and syntax, the conference also presented the sociolinguistic direction in the study of South Asian languages.

O. M. Kohl (India), in his report "The use of Indian languages by the Administration of India", analyzed the main provisions of the Constitution of India and other official documents concerning the status of languages, as well as the actual language policy in the Republic of India. According to the author, the main reasons that prevent the transition to local languages in the work of the administrative apparatus are: 1) artificially created and therefore difficult to implement terminology in local languages; 2) lack of standardization and unification of the proposed terminology; 3) lack of coordination between various organizations involved in the development of terminology.

A. Mukherjee (Osmania University, Hyderabad, India) in his report "Gender stratification in the course of linguistic existence and during language shifts" showed the influence of the speaker's gender on the ratio of the native language and the language adopted in official spheres of communication in his speech repertoire.

The two reports presented at the conference go beyond purely linguistic issues and can be called rather "general philological". Yu. V. Normanskaya (RSUH) in her report "Color designations of the horse suit in the Rig Veda" noted that the range of red shades used in describing the horse suit is much more detailed in the Rig Veda than in modern European languages, as a result, various shades of red can be translated as synonyms in European languages. Meanwhile, a detailed analysis of the color designation of the horse's suit is necessary for an adequate understanding of the Rig Veda text, since in many cases there is a connection between god and the color of the suit of the horse belonging to him. P. V. Basharin (RSUH) in his report "On the problem of Indian influence on the terms of early Sufism" proves the inconsistency of common identifications of some Sufi terms with the terms accepted in various philosophical schools of India (the Sufi term gair "otherness" - with Maya, the term fana "complete dissolution in the divine Absolute" -with Buddhist Nirvana, the term "non-unity" - with the Divine Absolute). navs "soul" - with atman and others. The author comes to the conclusion that there are no regular borrowings from the Indian tradition to Sufism and is inclined to agree with researchers who assume some general psychosomatic mechanism of communication between the mystic and the deity both in ecstatic Sufism and in the ecstatic directions of Indian mysticism.

The only paper on Dravidian languages, "Syntactic Depth in Classical Tamil Poems", was delivered by French linguist J.-L. Chevillard (CNRS, Paris). It was devoted to the analysis of phrases representing various types of attributive constructions, in which the definition can be a name, participle, verb root. The speaker accompanied the presentation with examples from the ancient Tamil poetry anthology "Ahananuru".

Twelve people representing scientific centers of India, Italy, Russia, Belgium and Israel took part in the literary section. The organizers of the conference deliberately did not set any thematic framework for the section "South Asian Literature", being convinced that, despite the emerging trend in world indology towards a highly specialized approach to the study of literature, a number of scientific reports covering literature from different eras in different languages of India are of value for everyone interested in literature the region. At the same time, it was possible to avoid eclecticism at the meetings, since the announced reports logically formed two large blocks, which could be called "classical literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages" and "problems of studying modern and contemporary literatures". Both the conference guests and numerous listeners (specialists in indology, students) noted that the reports demonstrated a high scientific level of the participants, and the meetings were held in a friendly atmosphere that encouraged lively discussions.

page 175

The first day of the Literary Studies section was devoted to the study of ancient and medieval Indian literature. The morning session was opened with a presentation by Heda Yasson (Israel) entitled "The Rajasthan Epic Cycle of Pabuji: Its genre nature, origin of tradition and typology". The researcher, who specializes in the study of epic and folklore traditions, highlighted the history of studying the epic cycle about the heroic deeds of Pabuja, which turned out to be especially valuable for the Russian audience, since numerous heroic tales and folklore of the peoples of Western India were described very sparsely in Russian. Unfortunately, the speech of a scientist from Israel was the only one at the conference that touched upon the rich epic tradition of India.

Then the time for presentations was given to specialists in classical literature. There were performances in which Indian aesthetic concepts were reflected, - Ch. Pieruccini (University of Milan) "Two Indian myths about the origin of painting" and M. A. Rusanov (ISAA, RSUH) "Ideas about the poet and the art of poetry in the poem of Vakpatiraji". The Italian researcher analyzed the myths set forth in the texts of applied purposes - in the ancient treatise on painting "Chitrasutra "(part of the text "Vishnudharmottara Purana") and Nagnajjit's Chitralakshana. She emphasized that painting, which was understood by the ancient Indians as an art intended to imitate life, at the same time had a specific practical significance. M. A. Rusanov studied the introductory part to the Prakrit poem "Gaudavaho" by Vakpatiraja (VIII century), in which the court poet outlined his view on the art of poetry: the poem reflects his ideas about the art of poetry. in the poetic language, about the subject of poetry, about the author and about the connoisseur and connoisseur of poetry.

The first day of the section ended with a report by A. M. Dubyansky (ISAA) "On the folklore roots of some themes of ancient Tamil love lyrics". In his opinion, the problem of the origin of the five canonical themes of classical Tamil poetry can be approached from different angles, but the study of their ritual and folklore origins is one of the most promising aspects of their study. It is from this point of view that A. M. Dubyansky considered some poems related to the kurinji theme, and showed that the formation of this theme is connected with the cult of the mountain god Murugan, and ritual hymns in his honor were the prototype of lyrical poems.

The next day was largely devoted to the theory and history of modern and contemporary North Indian prose. The tone of the meetings was set by the report of S. D. Serebryany (RSUH) "The Novel in Russia and India: two cases of transferring the phenomenon of Western culture to non-Western cultural soil". The scientist demonstrated a comparative approach to the study of literature (which, by the way, was continued in the speeches of the following speakers), presenting the history of the novel's origin in Russian and Indian literatures as an example of the coincidence of borrowing mechanisms that fit into a more general context of cultural parallels of typological nature. The report of T. A. Dubyanskaya (ISAA) "Two ways to develop the early Hindi novel" also addressed the problem of the origin of the genre, but it dealt with the history of the novel in a narrower framework. Using Srinivasdas ' Parikshaguru and D. Khatri's Chandrakanta novels as examples, two parallel and equally promising trends in the development of Hindi prose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were demonstrated.

K. Everert, a specialist in Hindi literature from Belgium, drew the attention of the audience to the history of the creation of the Hindi-language and Urdu-language versions of Premchand's short story "Manovritti" / " Apna-apna Khayal "(the report was titled: "Two titles, almost one story"). In her opinion, the differences between the two endings of the same story are insignificant only at first glance, they lie not only in the field of vocabulary and style, but also reflect the difference in the writer's ideological approach to the material.

The role of ideological background in the creation of the literary work was also discussed in the report of the Indian scholar Harish Trivedi - "Nationalist politics in Hindi literature: zigzags of liberalism against the narrow left path". He described the ideological conflict at the heart of Bhagvaticharan Varma's novel Crooked Paths (1946), and compared this work with the sequel to Rangey Raghava's The Straight and True Path. Concluding the series of reports on the prose of the XIX-XX centuries, the Indian writer Abdullah Bismillah (currently an employee of the Center for Indian Culture named after him.

page 176

J. Nehru at the Embassy of India in Moscow). His point of view on the prospects for the development of modern prose in Hindi and Urdu was particularly interesting because he combined a popular, actively working author and an analyst, a researcher of literature.

Another scholar from India, Viswanath Prasad Tiwari, spoke about modern Indian literature. His report was devoted to a comparative analysis of trends in Hindi poetry.

"What makes an Indian Indian?" - This is how G. V. Strelkova (ISAA) titled her report. She considered a problem that is reflected in all genres of Indian literature of recent decades, namely: the use of elements of classical literature (primarily plots, images of characters) in the work of modern authors. Based on the stories of K. B. Vayda, D. Bharati dramas, and N. K. Acharya, the researcher showed that a single cultural heritage, belonging to one tradition, becomes the most important factor in the self-identification of Indians, and ensures the continuity of Indian culture from ancient times to the present day.

The final general session of the conference summed up the results of its work and discussed the topics of future ICOSALL conferences.

Permanent link to this publication: