Linguistics, Interpretations, Concepts (LInC)
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p-ISSN: 3033-0181 / e-ISSN: 3033-0599
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Item REPLACEMENT OF INFINITIVES BY DA-CONSTRUCTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF BULGARIAN: DIACHRONIC AND FORMAL ANALYSIS(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) SOČANAC, TomislavThe 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.Item CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS: LIFE IS A JOURNEY IN DOCTOR MARIGOLD BY CHARLES DICKENS(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) KYRIAKAKIS, EfstratiosThis paper explores the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to the language and narrative structure of Charles Dickens’ short story Doctor Marigold. It identifies and discusses some of the numerous correspondences between the source domain and target domain which underpin the structural metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY, such as THE PERSON LEADING A LIFE IS A TRAVELER, HIS PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS, THE MEANS OF ACHIEVING PURPOSES ARE ROUTES, etc. The analysis establishes the rich mapping nature of the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor which might provide an explanation for its being an entrenched metaphor. This metaphor also structures the whole narrative of the short story. The linguistic evidence and the narrative structure reveal the cognitive processes in which both everyday and literary language are grounded.Item OBSERVATIONS ON BULGARIAN SURNAMES ARISING FROM TURKISH LOANWORDS MEANING PROFESSION OR CRAFT(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) KARTALOVA, MariyanaThe article examines the Bulgarian surnames, which are based on Turkish loanwords that have established themselves in the Bulgarian language. It should be noted that the original source of these Turkish loanwords may be a lexeme of Arabic or Persian origin. The empirical material is limited to those surnames that are motivated by a lexeme with the semantics of profession or craft. Bulgarian surnames from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century have been extracted. When studying the target group of anthroponyms, both possible linguistic relations and those of an extralinguistic nature are considered. The field of research includes synonymous relations between anthroponymic units, the formation of thematic circle, or the so-called “semantic sockets”. When presenting the synonymous relations between surnames motivated by a Turkish loanword and those with a domestic basis, it is not always easy to establish which form arose first (cf. Dyulgerovand Zidarov, Chobanovand Ovcharov, Kuyumdzhiev and Zlatarov, Domuschievand Svinarov, etc.). The examples, as will be clear from the presentation of this research, are indicative of the entry of Turkish vocabulary into the Bulgarian language, which also affects the surname system of the Bulgarians. This leads to the parallel existence in our language of surnames inspired by lexemes of different origins.Item THE CONCEPTS OF DYING AND DEATH IN UKRAINIAN DRAMA ABOUT THE FULL-SCALE WAR OF 2022-2024: BASIC MODELS AND TEXTUAL STRATEGIES(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) BONDAREVА, OlenaThe article deals with interpretations of the largest war in the modern world, proposed by contemporary Ukrainian non-combatant playwrights after 24 February 2022. Three basic models of the conceptual field of dying and death have been identified: the eternal battle between Good and Evil, the totality of war as initiation, and new rites of passage. Within each model, three major textual strategies have been analysed based on examples of contemporary plays about the war, covering various general cultural aspects of the artistic interpretation of the war through the writers’ comprehension of dying and death: the opposition between Ukrainian vitality and Russian mortality as Good and Evil; metamorphosis of the body in the context of the war; the impossibility of observing burial rites under the conditions of war; cataloguing of Russian war crimes; transformation of the victim status; conscious and spontaneous resistance to aggression; design of new rituals of transition; transfer of ordeals from the postmortem to the zone of death's anticipation; opening of portals between worlds.Item EXILE AS A TRAUMATIC PRETEXT OF A COUNTERNARRATIVE LITERATURE: THE MUSEUM OF UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER BY DUBRAVKA UGREŠIĆ(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) KAMBOUROV, DimitarThe text undertakes another attempt to read Ugrešić’s great novel from the viewpoint of the recent phenomenon of an East European world literature. It is an attempt to demonstrate how features such as counter-narrativity, anti-fictionality, and non-linearity, summoning key novels by Tokarczuk, Cărtărescu, Krasznahorkai, and Gospodinov, find their paradigmatic model in the novel of this Croatian exile. Her prose invents and implements the paradoxical regime of an intellectual commentary distance, pursuing identification through pain. An amateurish authenticity, shining out from an imitation of exemplary art, is the artistic program that, openly formulated and fulfilled by Ugrešić, was indirectly inherited and developed by Tokarczuk and Gospodinov, bringing them world audiences and awards. At the end, the text reflects on why a program that proved so successful with Tokarczuk and Gospodinov did not make Ugrešić the literary star and cult writer she deserves to be.Item THE NOVELS FLUGHUNDE [MEGABATS] (MARCEL BEYER) AND LICHTSPIEL (DANIEL KEHLMAN) – PATHS THROUGH THE PRESENT TO THE TRAUMA OF THE PAST(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) MINKOV, BorisThe article examines two works with similar problems, which – although set in the years of the Second World War, do not belong to the genre of the historical novel, because the different approaches to the questions of memory take them beyond the genre model. In Beyerʼs Flughunde (1995), the lyrically infused narration is directed at a kind of romantic obsession with listening to the voice of everything, at the idea of reaching and capturing unadulterated human voices and sounds, overcoming the prosthetics of the technical. The approach of this novel suggests the presence of deep dimensions of memory and the discovery of unsuspected patterns of memory ordering through the acoustic unconscious. In Kehlmanʼs Lichtspiel (2023) this approach is also present. The reader is invited to search the recesses of memory with the narrator for motives in past behavior and reenactments of decisive moments. But access to the deep dimensions of memory is denied here, and the paths to the past lead to suggestions of the anesthetic power of blind chance.Item FANTASTIC ELEMENTS IN THE NARRATION OF PAST TRAUMA IN LISA WEEDA’S NOVEL ALEKSANDRA(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) ZHYGUN, SnizhanaThe article analyzes the narrative of past trauma in Lisa Weeda's novel Alexandra as a third-generation trauma narrative. The aim of the study is to assess the role of the fantastic elements in the narrative strategy of the author. Lisa, the protagonist and narrator, seeks to discover the history of her relatives, the Krasnov family, but the sources she needs are remote in time and separated in space. Therefore, the novel creates an imaginary chronotope, the Palace of the Lost Don Cossack, where Lisa meets the dead, and imaginary narrators, the deer, symbols of the Don Cossacks. In this way, the author fills in the gaps in the information concerning the experience of the traumatized generation and comprehends the impact of her ancestors’ experience on the present of her contemporaries. The fantastic elements contribute to the realization of the narrative as a dialog between generations and turn the neglected history of the Ostarbeiters into an emotionally accessible one. The knowledge that Lisa recovers from obscurity helps her understand the first phase of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 as a return to the arbitrariness of the Soviet dictatorship which has not been condemned for its crimes because it has silenced its victims.Item THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF HELL: TOTALITARIAN PSYCHIATRY IN SEVERAL LITERARY EXAMPLES(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) MINDOVA, LyudmilaOne of the earliest serious examples of psychiatric abuse under communism is the 150-page manuscript smuggled to the West by the Russian dissident and “imperialist spy” Vladimir Bukovsky, after being exchanged for the Chilean communist activist Luis Corvalán. The information about the so-called “latent” or “mild schizophrenia”, under which many dissidents in the USSR were institutionalized, serves as definitive proof of abuse, which the World Health Organization condemned. After 1989, numerous literary works and memoirs about repressive psychiatry emerged in the former Eastern Bloc. The article is based on several eloquent examples from post-Yugoslav and Bulgarian contexts. As psychiatrist Dr. Kiril Milenkov claims, after the Revival Process, most of the documentation of abuse in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria was destroyed, so today information about this can primarily be drawn from the memories of victims or the rare confessions of physicians. Among the key Bulgarian accounts is the book by the prominent Bulgarian intellectual and translator Vladimir Svintila, The Face of the Gorgon. In the post-Yugoslav context, the contributions of the writer Dragoslav Mihailović and psychologist Petar Kostić are significant, as they helped create a systematic account of the psychological repressions at Goli Otok.Item WHERE IS THE TRAUMA HERE?(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) PANOV, AlexanderThe article questions why fiction likes to talk about various human traumas. How does the reader participate in this narrative—as a psychotherapist or as a participant in group therapy? Analyzing the narrative work of Pavel Vezhinov from the period of the 1960s and 1970s - the short story collections The Boy with the Violin and Breath of Almonds, as well as the three novels The Barrier, The White Lizard and The Lake Boy - the author wants to prove that at the root of serious social traumas lies the disintegration of the traditional value system associated with the family structure, destroyed both by the shock invasion of Modernity and by the violent change in social morality carried out by totalitarian communist power.Item THE TRANSMISSION OF TRAUMA. PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF SUFFERINGS OF THE BULGARIAN TRIBE. STORIES OF LYUBEN KARAVELOV (MOSCOW, 1868)(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) DECHEV, ZdravkoThe interpretation of trauma in the context of Karavelovʼs Russian collection of narratives about the sufferings of the enslaved Bulgarians has different grounds. The opening plot, entitled Among the Shadows, reveals how Karavelov's “Russian bookˮ of 1868 reached Bulgarian readers. If to the Russian public the collection presents the sufferings through the experience of their collectiveness, subjects them to a distanced perception and implies empathy, in our country the peculiar anthology of the sufferings is fragmented, disintegrates again into pages that remain (in the words of Nikolay Chernokozhev) in the “shadow of the bookˮ. In our country, suffering is not only a residual trauma that represents us, it must be both an incentive and a reason for our existence beyond suffering. The subsequent part – The “Handwritingˮ of Trauma – tries to interpret the mutually adjusting possibilities for perceiving the suffering that Karavelov offers through his texts in the collection. Our research intentions in this direction are provoked by the attitude that Karavelov's narration of the sufferings of the Bulgarians, their recognition as traumas, stems from the voice (regardless of whether it is recorded or spoken) – as an authentic address to anyone who could “hearˮ, that is, understand and empathize with what is shared. For the voice of suffering, the “notesˮ (“Turski Pasha. Notes of a Nunˮ) turn out to be a natural narrative environment. The style of the notes resembles the singularity of the voice, following the ramifications of the fable type of narration. The impact of the traumas of the suffering of the enslaved asserts its legitimacy in Karavelov's collection and in the literal highlighting of the voice as silent, telling, shouting, and singing (Bozhko, Neda). In the final plot – Around the Dead Body – naturalism in the image of the dismembered enslaved body is metaphorically linked to the decomposition of Karavelovʼs book of suffering into pages. The “bodyˮ of the book cannot remain unaffected in the Bulgarian world fractured by the traumas of the enslaved.Item THE CINEMATIC DE-EPICISATION OF THE EPIC NOVEL. THE CASE OF TOBACCO 1962(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Penchev, BoykoThe article analyses the film adaptation of the 1962 novel Tobacco, comparing the cinematic decisions of the director Nikola Korabov and the cinematographer Valo Radev with the processes of "deepicisation" in Bulgarian fiction of the 1960s. Particular attention is paid to the negative assessment of the film by the new generation of film critics, who believe that the adaptation sought epic scale rather than psychological depth and thus reinforced the weak rather than the strong aspects of the novel. The paradox is that ten years after the discussion of the novel Tobacco, a new discussion is taking place, now on the film Tobacco, in which the film is accused of the opposite of what the novel was criticized for. On the basis of the comparison between the narrative strategies of the novel and the cinematic decisions in the film, the paper claims that Nikola Korabov's Tobacco demonstrates a different, modern film poetics that is commensurate with the radical changes in Bulgarian fiction of the same decade.Item LONGING FOR PERSONALITIES – THE TESTAMENT OF BORIS YOTSOV(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Damyanova, RumyanaThe text follows Boris Yotsov's idea of the personalities who should lead the Bulgarian people forward – the optimistic forecast for the right choice and the explanation of the failures on the historical path that are due to wrong choices. In its aim to present the main moments of the scholar's life and creative destiny, the text is based on aspects of Boris Yotsov's article “Longing for personalities”.Item NARRATIVES ABOUT MIGRATION FROM BULGARIA AFTER 1944(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Endreva, MariaBased on the concept of loyalty by A. Hirschman, the text tries to define and schematically to analyze the various narratives about emigration from Bulgaria after 1944. The thesis is that socialism fails to build loyal citizens, which leads to a mass migration from the country after 1989. In the period up to 1989, the official strategy of power to demonize the West and those who fled to it and the heroization of the defenders of socialism, as well as the subversive narrative of free and wealthy society, which becomes a object of desires, are examined. After the Cold war, the narrative of the idealization of the West manifested two aspects: cultural and economic, and motivated millions of people to leave the country. A relatively underdeveloped discourse on the silence of negative experiences abroad is also examined.Item WOMEN'S CELIBACY – CURSE AND/OR SENTENCE (OBSERVATIONS ON BULGARIAN PERIODICALS AND LITERATURE BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS)(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Ichevska, TatyanaThis text tries to trace how in the interwar period public attitudes on the topic of old maids change, which factors increase sensitivity to the issue of female celibacy, what perspectives for its understanding articles in the periodical press set and how ideas about the old maid, already formed in the public space, are (re)reconsidered in Bulgarian literature when they are integrated into certain stories. The authors' assessment of female celibacy is different – for men it is a pathology, producing “monsters“, “hermaphrodites“, “camel birds“, ugly creatures; a sentence more terrible than death (Achchiiski, Mutafov, Ferrero); from a female point of view, celibacy is an “undesirable condition“ (Zlatareva), and insofar as some pathological deviations in the behavior of old maids could be seen, they are precedent and should not be used to build a typology of the phenomenon. It is evident from the articles and artistic works reviewed that for women to remain old maids is as much a compulsion imposed by unconquered patriarchal prejudices against them as it is a choice born of an unwillingness to accept compromising roles in society and in the family. And while celibacy may seem like a dangerous defect of emancipation, it can also be seen as an effect that allows a woman to spin the threads of her life according to her own rules and patterns.Item ANDREY PLATONOV: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOTEXTUALITY(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Kiossev, AlexanderFollowing a methodology developed by Radosvet Kolarov, which relativizes „the death of the author“ and turns it into an inner-textual mechanism, this article deals with the complex and dramatic biography of the great writer Andrey Platonov. An attempt is made to analyze it as an organizing auto-poetic principle of his creative work. The transformations of enduring ideological and emotional motives that start from the early Platonov and reach his late works are traced; the principles of auto-citation, transformation, and auto-polemics are analyzed. The conclusions comment on the special phantasmal core present in every ideology and the possibility of it being manipulated politically.Item POISONOUS BOOKS(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Freise, MatthiasBooks can be poisonous in a literal, metaphorical, metonymical or symbolic sense. Literally, for protection; metonymically, in fiction, for killing; metaphorically, in metalepsis, as revealing reality as being fictitious; symbolically, as a danger to readers. The article examines examples of all four possibilities. Often metaphor, metonymy and symbols are used to convey a metapoetic message about the relationship between fiction and reality, about the political, social or psychological power of literature, about literature as temptation or a narcotic, or about the ambivalence of a literary message, and thus fundamentally different modes of reading. In particular, the article argues that David Damrosch’s reading in What is World Literature? of Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars, which he declares to be poisoned by Serbian nationalism, is subverted by the book itself which differentiates a poisonous from a non-poisonous copy of itself, meaning alternative modes of reading.Item THE INFINITY-POINT. GENESIS OF SOME CONCEPTS IN JULIA KRISTEVA’S EARLY WORK(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Nikolchina, MiglenaThe study traces the continuity and transformation of some of Julia Kristeva's major concepts between her first book published in French Semeiotike (1969) and her early magnum opus Revolution in Poetic Language (1974), while taking into consideration the further vicissitudes of these concepts. Kristeva's work in its entirety is focused on the restless “revolutionary” frontier between the non-human and the human, between the inanimate and the biological, and between sensoriality and code: the network of (in)human connections, from which the subject's “infinite point” emerges. Exploring the genesis of Kristeva's conceptual apparatus is motivated by the conviction that it is especially vital and relevant vis-à-vis the challenges of contemporary technological developments.Item 45 YEARS IS NOT ENOUGH: AN IDEA THAT SHOOK THE WORLD OF LINGUISTICS(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Dagnev, IvayloConceptual metaphor theory emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s and viewed the process and product of metaphorization as a complex interrelationship between language and thought. A central claim of this theory proposed by Lakoff & Johnson and subsequently developed by numerous researchers is that the apperception of the unknown takes place through a special process of construction in semantics – metaphorization, which results from the complex interaction between embodied experience, the conceptual system and its linguistic representation. The evolution of the theory problematises many essential issues of semantics such as the meaning and use of words, the relationship between literal and figurative meaning, between the conceptual character and the lexical expression in language. Like any significant idea, the theory of conceptual metaphor has become the target of numerous criticisms on all its aspects, which, after all, are the necessary driving force for its development.Item ON THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE LEXICAL MEANING OF THE RUSSIAN VERB TANCEVAТ’ AND VERBAL PREFIXES WITH SPATIAL MEANING(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Slavkova, Svetlana; Zangoli, GiuliaThis paper analyses the prefixal encoding of spatial orientation in one of the few Russian ʿstrongʾ verbs of manner of motion, i. e. the verb tancevat’ (to dance). Our study relies primarily on the conceptual framework presented in the works of V. A. Plungyan (Плунгян / Plungyan 2002; 2011). Following the approach adopted by the author regarding verbs specializing in expressing only the manner of motion (in the author’s terminology, “strong verbs of manner of motion”), we focus our attention on the behavior of the verb tancevat’ (to dance) and on its prefixed forms in order to determine which ʿlatentʾ components of its semantics are activated when prefixed. Attention is paid as well to the interaction between the spatial meaning of verbal prefixes and the lexical meaning of the verb tancevat’ (to dance). Except for a few cases the material we analyse is taken from the Russian National Corpus. Exam-ples are intentionally given with a broader context in order to provide a more detailed analysis of prefixed forms of the verb tancevat’ in their context of use.Item THE LANGUAGE OF DIDACTIC LITERATURE TRANSLATIONS DURING THE BULGARIAN REVIVAL (ANTON NIKOPIT’S LESSONS FOR CHILDREN)(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Ivanova, DianaThe purpose of this article is to analyse Anton Nikopit’s idiolect in his translation of the first part of the four-volume Μαθήματα διὰ τοὺς Παίδας (Les-sons for Children) (1850), an encyclopaedia written by Kōnstantinos Vardalachos, an eminent scholar of the Modern Greek Enlightenment. The impressive size of Nikopit’s textbook (359 pages) pertains to the didactic discourse in the context of the Bulgarian linguistic situation in the 1850s. The focus of the study is the linguistic features of the translator’s idiolect with the aim to widen our understanding of the process of standardization of the language and the gradual solidification of the New Bulgarian trend of language codification. The study points out Nikopit’s contribution to the standardization of the New Bulgarian literary language, clarifies the character of his idiolect, and his achievement in introducing several grammatical norms as well as his approach to modernizing the writing norms. It underlines the practical use of the textbook regarding the European methods at that time and their practical application in children’s education. They entered Bulgarian schools via the Greek didactic literature.