Linguistics, Interpretations, Concepts (LInC)

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https://doi.uni-plovdiv.bg/handle/store/5

p-ISSN: 3033-0181 / e-ISSN: 3033-0599

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THE USE OF THE PUPPET THEATRE AS A TOOL FOR TEACHING AND STIMULATING STUDENTS’ IMAGINATION
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Kapon, Zoya
This article examines a working educational theatrical practice that has been established in the dynamically developing contemporary theatrical art, namely the work with theatre puppets for the development of actors' imagination. Puppet theatrical techniques, with their specificity, possess a high educational potential for building vivid imagination, spontaneity and creativity in the process of educating contemporary multifunctional actors.
TOWARDS A FULLY CROSS-PLATFORM, UNICODE-COMPLIANT, SOFTWARE ENTRY SYSTEM FOR DIGITISATION OF OLD BULGARIAN TEXTS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Mathewson, John
This article makes a case for moving from a plethora of ways of digitising Old Bulgarian texts that are incompatible with each other towards a software package that is cross-platform and results in texts that utilise the Unicode standard and are completely cross-compatible. It also describes the programming of just such a software package.
ADJECTIVAL -ING PARTICIPLES: ROOTS AND MANIFESTATIONS OF ADJECTIVENESS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Georgieva, Nikoleta
This paper investigates the adjectival nature of the English -ing participle, tracing its roots and examining its manifestations. The adjectival characteristics are conceptualized in two distinct ways: (1) adjectiveness – an inherent property of some participles, rooted in their semantic content, and (2) adjectivization – an acquired property resulting from syntactic deployment. The analysis reviews existing criteria for the classification of -ing participles in order to identify the most reliable ones and to organise them into distinct sets corresponding to each of the two phenomena. In addition, the study investigates both the principal meanings conveyed by adjectival -ing participles and the verb classes that hold the greatest potential for their derivation, presenting a meaning-based classification of adjectival -ing forms.
STRUCTURING INFORMATION: INSIGHTS FROM A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF PASSIVE VOICE
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Spasov, Krasimir
The present paper explores how speakers use the passive voice in spoken English as a practical tool for organizing information and guiding listeners through a message. Rather than being just a stylistic alternative to the active voice, the passive often helps speakers highlight what is already familiar, keep a topic in focus, leave out agents that do not matter, and place heavier or more complex details towards the end of a clause. Using examples from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), this paper shows that these choices reflect broader tendencies in the English language toward presenting information from given to new and maintaining a smooth flow of ideas. The findings suggest that the passive voice plays a meaningful role in real-time communication by helping speakers manage attention and process demands.
RURAL SOUNDS – URBAN SOUNDS: THE ACOUSMATIC RANGE OF A YOUNG MAN’S BEING IN GREAT EXPECTATIONS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Yasenova, Kristina
In the following text, I would like to suggest the hypothesis that Magwitch’s influence over Pip is an acousmatic one. My methodological platform could be called developmental acousmatic phenomenology, as far as I attempt to discuss the dynamics between subject, sound, and development in time. The strategy of analysis, according to such a platform, includes selecting moments from the novel that exemplify Magwitch’s acousmatic influence over Pip, and also, comparing rural and urban acousmatic influences and the ways in which they affect the young man. Through the methods of selection, comparison and contextualisation, I arrive at the conclusions that rural and urban sounds in the Dickensian novel Great Expectations are more like subjective attributes, coloured with, or evoking, certain memories or events, rather than simple physical facts. Additionally, hearing, as a sense, is presented as a universal sense which is able to connect and communicate other senses – for instance, visions and smells in the novel could also be heard.
NATIONAL LITERATURE – WORLD AUDIENCE: PROJECTS, IMPOSSIBILITIES
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Peleva, Inna
The text draws upon a significant number of allusions to classical and recent Bulgarian literary works incorporated in Yanitsa Radeva’s novel The Year That Began on Sunday (2024). This “catalogue” is designed to show that the book is yet another example of a work that cannot be re-created – even if the translator is gifted enough – to be properly received in a non-Bulgarian cultural context. Parallels are drawn with the communicative strategies of other contemporary Bulgarian authors who (unlike Radeva in this particular novel) reach out to an audience beyond the confines of Bulgaria’s national context. The discussion also revolves around the fact that such globally oriented projects often involve a negative assessment of Bulgarian-ness; this tendency contrasts with Radeva’s narrative which, at the same time, is alien to a patriotic idealization of the local. The paper puts forward the idea that the translation of the world – national nexus into the dreamland – self-deprecating identity nexus (a translation peculiar to some contemporary Bulgarian literary texts) re-confirms the hypothesis that Bulgarian culture is self-colonizing (after Alexander Kyossev).
WESTERN MODELS, EASTERN FOLLOWERS: BULGARIAN CRIME FICTION FROM SOCIALISM TO POST-SOCIALISM
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Bressan, Francesco
This article analyzes the evolution of Bulgarian crime fiction from the socialist period (1944-1989) to the post-socialist era, focusing on the work of Bulgarian writer Andrei Gulyashki and on various elements of crime prose as a mirror of the country's sociopolitical transformations. During the socialist period authors such as Andrei Gulyashki created ideologized heroes like Avakum Zakhov, a socialist counterpart to James Bond, who operated within the rigid narrative boundaries imposed by socialist realism. The genre served both as a propaganda tool and as a form of controlled escapism. The comparison between the Russian translation, faithful to the original work, and the English translation of the novel Momchilovo Case demonstrates substantial differences. With the fall of the regime in 1989, detective fiction underwent a radical metamorphosis: incorruptible heroes gave way to morally ambiguous antiheroes, reflecting the chaos, corruption, and crisis of values of the post-communist transition. Through textual and comparative analysis, this article demonstrates how Bulgarian crime fiction has maintained a national specificity while dialoguing with Western traditions, functioning as a literary barometer of the country's historical upheavals.
THE TALENTED AGAINST THE BLABBERMOUTHS OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: FLOWERS FOR THE NEIGHBOURHOOD BY IVAN DINKOV
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Mihaylov, Dimitar
This article offers an interpretation of Ivan Dinkov’s book Flowers for the Neighbourhood in which he examines the relations between the talented and the parochial, his reaction against it and ultimately his victory over it. The author comments on Dinkov’s thoughts about the Bulgarian people’s psychology and his ideas about personality vs community, people vs inhabitants, neighbourhood vs fatherland.
MAINSTREAM AND COUNTERCULTURE
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Aretov, Nikolay
The concept of province can be read as what lies outside the centre – broadly speaking, outside the canon and the dominant mainstream. This article continues observations on literary stratification by introducing and discussing the concepts of mainstream, counterculture, and underground, which are less frequently used in Bulgarian academic criticism, and examines their place within the established typology. The mainstream is a dynamic phenomenon: it follows dominant representations and tastes, achieves commercial success, and is popularised by the media. The existing typology – primarily based on politics – is critiqued. I argue that for a phenomenon to be classified as counterculture or underground, it must not only oppose the mainstream aesthetically but also in its mode of dissemination. Counterculture is understood as the expression of (often suppressed) minorities that oppose cultural and/or social norms and seek alternative dissemination channels. Conditional examples include non-traditional folklore (jokes), chapbooks (pesnopoyki), samizdat, 1980s public readings, the fantasy genre, and certain popular music forms (punk, rap, chalga). The article highlights such phenomena and authors, demonstrating their links to contemporary folklore and urban argot.
POLITICAL FORNICATION AND THE NATIONAL IDEAL: THE IMAGE OF THE UNION
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Gyulemerova, Velika
The article analyzes Chardafon the Great. A Biographical Sketch in Profile, examining the ideological image of the homeland and different perceptions of the Unification. The emphasis is on the opposition between Zahari Stoyanov and Ivan Vazov which affected their different perceptions of the act of Unification. While for Vazov the heroes of this period are compromised, for Stoyanov they embody a new form of dignity. This difference in points of view is of crucial significance to understanding different ideological models in Bulgarian literature. The article also emphasizes the way in which patriarchal morality and traditional values are reinterpreted in the text. The main focus is the reversal of the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son – instead of condemnation, political “fornication“ is shown as adaptability. Chardafon the Great offers an alternative historical perspective, in which traditional notions of power, homeland and political loyalty are questioned. Zahari Stoyanov does not simply tell the biography of a hero, but creates a new model of national identity, in which imperfection and humor play a central role. The text affirms the Unification as an act of national self-affirmation, in which the people take their destiny into their own hands, despite the lack of “blessing“ from the Great Powers.
MOSAIC OF FAMOUS CONTEMPORARY NOVELS AND THE HEART IN THE CARDBOARD BOX – CO-AUTHORSHIP PRACTICES, CREATIVE INFLUENCES
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Georgieva, Vanya
The paper explores an approach to understanding the contribution of A Mosaic of Famous Contemporary Novels” (1909 – 1948) to Bulgarian culture and literature. Special attention is paid to the collaborative translations included in the series. The co-authoring practices illustrated by the narratives chosen have had an influence on the creation of the collective work of Svetoslav Minkov and Konstantin Konstantinov. The novel The Heart in the Cardboard Box (1933) is examined in the light of intertextuality, translation between different cultures, the relations between textual reality and the reality beyond the text.
“THE GRAY PROFESSOR”, OR ON BULGARIAN CRITICISM AS A LIFELONG PURSUIT (DR. KRASTYO KRASTEV IN MILENA KIROVA’S LITERARY-HISTORICAL PORTRAITURE)
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Velkova-Gaydarzhieva, Antonia
The text critically examines one of the defining strokes in the post-independence literary history of Milena Kirova – the one dedicated to Dr. Krastyo Krastev, whose devotion to literary criticism became a lifelong pursuit. The focus is on one of the first extensive literary-historical attempts that constructed a complex, internally contradictory, multifaceted – both in characterological and socio-stylistic terms – portrait of the Critic, known as “the man in gray.” For the first time, a silhouette of a modern arbiter of esthetic taste has been outlined so closely and in such detail from a psychographic, esthetic-literary, historical-contextual, and creative-biographical perspective within the framework of the literary-historical narrative. To shift the perspective on him–from the familiar, conventional literary-historical image of a rigorous but dull and doctrinaire scholar, he emerges as one of the most perceptive and conceptual connoisseurs of esthetics, a zealous builder of modern Bulgarian culture; the “General” of literary criticism in our country.
IMPRESSIONS OF ISTANBUL BY DR. TODOR YANKOV – THE FIRST BULGARIAN TRAVELLER TO THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Mevsim, Hüseyin
Regardless of whether it is called Constantinople, Istanbul or Tsarigrad, the global city on the Bosphorus has always occupied an important place in Bulgarian political and spiritual history. The first travelogue in Bulgarian literature about this city appeared in the pages of a magazine only at the end of the 19th century, and very little is known about its author, Dr. Todor Yankov, today. This paper attempts to understand the reasons for the late appearance of the first travelogue; it examines three works – by Petko Slaveykov, Ivan Bogorov and Dimitar Mollov – about Istanbul, which may be taken to function as preludes to Impressions of Istanbul. The research offers a biographical and creative portrait of the educationalist, politician, publicist and writer Todor Yankov while outlining the compositional features of his travelogue about the imperial capital. The author of the travelogue was a representative of the first post-independence generation, which also determines his different attitude towards both the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the Bulgarian cultural and historical heritage in it; he carries the consciousness of a Bulgarian European pushed away from the narrow dimensions of the strictly domestic.
PAUL McCARTNEY'S SONG LYRICS: LITERARY AUTO-REFLEXIVITY
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Zahova, Kalina
The paper presents certain contemporary observations by Paul McCartney on his own song lyrics written during his creative periods with The Beatles, Wings, as a solo artist, and in collaboration with other artists. The article traces the relations between specificity and openness of the interpretation, as well as the deliberate and spontaneously originated polysemy. Paul McCartney's auto-reflexivity is examined not only as a form of autobiographicality, which it inevitably is, but also as a manifestation of various aspects of literariness.
THE CASE OF THE LOWER DEPTHS OR GORKY’S CHEKHOVIAN PLAY
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Dimitrov, Lyudmil
The text examines Maxim Gorky’s most famous play, The Lower Depths, in the context of its emergence, which was not merely the period of the author’s early dramatic expressions. This period marked the concluding stage of 19th-century Russian literature, when the archetypal plot built by Griboyedov and Pushkin, and constantly maintained by Russian playwriting through shifts, mimicry and revivals, is ultimately deconstructed by Chekhov as exhausted and henceforth untenable. The article outlines the contradictory figure of Gorky, whose work relies on vain imitations, ideological constructs, and the use of, or reference to, external authority, borrowed from his illustrious contemporaries, Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov, without Gorky’s surpassing the artistic level achieved in Russian drama up to that point.
WILLIAM BLAKE’S MILTON: GIN A BODY MEET A BODY COMIN THROUGH THE SKY
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Terziev, Lubomir
The paper focuses on one of the crucial stages in the formation of the subject of the apocalyptic event in William Blake’s mythopoeia. The central claim is that in his epic poem Milton, the poet performs a peculiar act of kenosis epitomized by Milton’s coming down from heaven to enter mortal Blake’s foot. This prepares the merger between Blake’s “real” persona and Los – the imaginary figure of the visionary poet.
DIMINUTIVES IN RABBIE BURNS’ POETIC PIECES (AND THEIR TRANSLATION EQUIVALENTS IN RUSSIAN, FRENCH AND GERMAN)
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Chankova, Yana; Bagasheva, Maria; Kiryakova-Dineva, Teodora; Todorov, Blagovest
The present paper is part of a more comprehensive and extended re-search project which seeks to investigate and quantitatively and qualitatively analyse the data obtained with respect to the diminutive forms attested in the poetic works of Robert Burns and their respective translation equivalents in Russian, French and German. What we present here is a pilot study on the diminutive forms in the original poetic texts and in their translations into the three languages. The aim is to investigate the types of form-formative patterns of expressing diminutiveness and their function in the respective languages. The discussion opens with a brief outline of the specific features of the category of diminutiveness in the studied languages.
VINCENZO KORNAROS’ DRAMA AND ITS BULGARIAN READERS – AN EXAMPLE OF THE CULTURAL INTERACTION BETWEEN KARAMANLI AND BULGARIAN LITERARY TRADITIONS. ETHNICAL, REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF 19TH CENTURY BULGARIAN-TURKISH BILINGUALISM
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Saldzhiev, Hristo; Konaç, Ayşe
The article touches on the social and cultural aspects of Bulgarian-Turkish bilingualism in the 19th century. The Cyrillic transliteration of the Turkish (Karamanli) translation of the religious play of the Cretan poet Vincenzo Kornaros has been used as a basis for the present investigation. Initially, this work was writ-ten in Greek at the beginning of the 17th century during the Venetian rule of the is-land. The work apparently followed the model of Jesuitical religious drama and ex-emplified the Cretan Renaissance which developed under direct Italian influence. Sophronios of Sille in 1836 translated it into the Turkish dialect of Karamanli using Greek letters. The Cyrillic transliteration was published in 1845 by the Bulgarian hierodeacon Hadzhi Yoanikiy in the printing house of the Constantinople Patriar-chate in Istanbul. This new edition contained a long list of the names and residences of the people who pre-ordered the Cyrillic variant of the drama. The list also in-cluded fragmentary information about the social and professional status of the readers. The analysis of the evidence from the list, as well as other Cyrillic Turkish editions indicate that Bulgarian-Turkish bilingualism from this period could not be limited to a certain region, social, or professional group. In many regions it was a popular phenomenon and was spread among different groups. The final part of the article comments on the discontinuation of this bilingualism.
RESHAPING THE GROWING MIND: HOW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY CHANGES THE WAYS CHILDREN LEARN LANGUAGE AND WHAT CAN WE DO?
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Vulchanova, Mila; Vulchanov, Valentin
Digital technologies are dominating our daily lives. From smartphones and tablets to applications and virtual or augmented reality, they provide useful solutions, for e.g., navigating in new environments, learning languages, or acquiring literacy skills, in addition to entertainment. While available technologies may extend our mental capacities, our brains also adapt to those technologies and acquire many of their features (Carr, 2008). Concerns have been raised about the consequences of this digital reality for processing information and acquiring knowledge (Wolf, 2018). Extensive exposure to digital technology may impact specifically strongly young children, due to increased sensitivity to external input and brain plasticity in the first years of life. This then offers the opportunity to harness new technologies for educational purposes and align them with evidence-based and age-appropriate educational goals.
REPLACEMENT OF INFINITIVES BY DA-CONSTRUCTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF BULGARIAN: DIACHRONIC AND FORMAL ANALYSIS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Sočanac, Tomislav
The paper studies the diachronic patterns of competition between infinitives and da-constructions (also known as ‘Balkan subjunctives’) in Bulgarian. The use of these grammatical categories is studied across different historical periods (from Old Bulgarian to Modern Bulgarian) and in different syntactic contexts. It is argued that certain aspects of infinitive loss and its replacement by da-constructions were due to a broader typological drift from non-finite to finite structures, while others were a result of local language-contact pressures within the Balkan-sprachbund area. The paper also provides a formal analysis of the diachronic syntax of the mood marker da, which accounts for its spread to control contexts typical of infinitive use and the eventual complete replacement of infinitives by da-complements in Bulgarian.

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