Keywords: symposium, Slavists, Serbia, Slavic languages, Slavic studies, historical dialectology, Russian Diaspora, discursology, phraseology, representology, literary studies, translation, linguodidactics
From 28 to 29 January, 2021, the 59th Meeting of Slavists of Serbia «Topical Issues of Studying and Teaching Slavic languages, literatures and cultures» was held at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade. Due to the epidemic situation, the Meeting was held online (Zoom program) in the form of a national symposium with international participation. As in previous years, the the following programs were implemented: 1) Scientific Symposium; 2) Training Seminar for teachers of the Russian language.
The organizers of the Scientific Symposium were: The Society of Slavists of Serbia, the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade. The Scientific Symposium was opened by the Chairman of the Society of Slavists of Serbia, Prof. Dr. Sc. Vuchina Rajcevic. The 59th Meeting was attended by 52 participants from 5 countries (Serbia, Bulgaria, Spain, Russia, Japan). 48 reports were read out in Serbian (31), Russian (11),Slovak (5) and English (1).
The plenary session consisted of 5 reports by leading Slavic scientists from Japan Serbia, Spain and Russia. Professor M. Nomachi (Hokkaido University, Saporo) devoted his report to the evolution of S. Bernstein’s views on the status of the Macedonian and Kashubian languages. Prof. M. Feisa (Faculty of Philology, University of Novi Sad) reviewed the status of the Rusyn language, which is one of the official languages of Vojvodina. Professor R. Tirado (University of Granada) introduced the audience to a new approach to the study of the verb form in Spanish in comparison with the Russian language on the basis of the field of aspectuality developed by prof. A.V. Bondarko (Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences). In her speech, Associate Professor of Slavic Philology of Moscow State University, specialist in Serbo-Croatian philology E. Yakushkina considered the ways of forming the Serbo-Croatian language on the basis of Serbian Vojvodin and Croatian Slavonic dialects. Professor A. Korda Petrovic of the Department of Slavistics of the University of Belgrade, a Bohemian specialist in the Czech language, analyzed the translations by prof. Miodrag Siminovich (1937-2020) of songs of the Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986).
The meetings were held in four sections. In the first section, the problems of modern discursology were considered in the reports of D. Lesnevskaya (Sofia) – features of speech acts in Russian and Bulgarian epistolary discourse, R. Radojcic (Belgrade) – linguistic characteristics of Russian and Serbian diplomatic discourse, S. Ovsyanikova (Moscow) – the specifics of Internet discourse, in particular the specifics of the blogs of Internet in Russian. The report of A. Maslova (Saransk) was devoted to metacommunication in the Russian speech. Changes in short adjectives in the Russian language based on the material of orthographic dictionaries were considered in the report of E. Ginich (Belgrade). The Russian and Serbian phraseological units were discussed in the reports of E. Jocic (Belgrade) and E. Jovic (Nish). The report of N. Jankovic (Belgrade) was devoted to first ideas of Romanization of the Russian Cyrillic script described in the anonymous book «The Experience of Introducing New Russian Letters», 1883.
The second section was opened with a report by the famous Belgrade researcher of the Russian Diaspora I. Antanasievich devoted to the Russian emigration in Belgrade, in particular the activities of the Belgrade literary and theatrical group «Eleven». A. Yakovlevich-Radunovich (Belgrade) made a report on the new documentary novel by L. Yuzefovich «Winter Road», 2015, which describes an episode of the Russian Civil War – the campaign of the Siberian Volunteer squad from Vladivostok to Yakutia in 1922-1923. In the second section, a number of reports were presented on the problems of linguodidactics – creative writing in teaching Slovak as a native language at the University in Novy Sad was discussed in the report of E. Zvaleva (Novi Sad);O. Trapeznikova (Kemerovo, Nish) made a report on the use of podcasts in teaching Russian as another Slavic language, etc.
The third section was opened by B. Maric (Belgrade), who presented a report on representology – the study of internal speech based on the Russian and Serbian languages. Russian song discourse was presented by A. Matrusova (Moscow). The metaphors of the Covid-19 pandemic were commented in the reports of A. Prokhorova (Novi Sad) and P. Obuchina (Belgrade). The theme of monocolocability of words in Czech and Serbian language on materials of Czech national corpus and corpus of contemporary Serbian language is discussed in the report by S. Popovic (Belgrade). A. Makisheva (Novi Sad) examined cross-language interference in the media discourse as a consequence of the Slovak-Serb bilingualism in Vojvodina.
In the fourth section, a number of literary reports were presented – a report by A. Simunovich (Novi Sad) on the work of the great Rusyn writer Mikhail Kovac (1909 – 2005); a report by T. Gaev (Belgrade) on the poetry of the Ukrainian writer and poet Yevgeny Malanyuk (1897 – 1968) in Serbian translation; a report by A. Svetlik (Novi Sad) on the features of the prose of the Slovak writer Zuska Keplova. S. Yelesievich (Belgrade) made a presentation on the Bulgarian list of «Teachings on the Benefits of the Soul» by Metropolitan Hilarion of Kiev. In his report M. Milikic (Leposavic, Belgrade) considered the specifics of the film «Monday or Tuesday» by the Croatian film director Vartoslav Mimic (1923-2020).
At the closing of the 59th Meeting of Slavists of Serbia, Deputy Chairman of the Slavist Society prof. Dalibor Sokolovich summarized the work done and the results of the discussions. The online Meeting was fruitful and successful. The participants thanked the organizers for the opportunity to participate in this traditional international scientific forum.
Read the extended chronicle of the 59th Meeting of Slavists of Serbia in the First issue of the magazine «Russian Studies without borders» for 2021.