{"id":543,"date":"2010-06-05T10:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-06-05T08:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=543"},"modified":"2010-03-18T12:07:27","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T10:07:27","slug":"using-russian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=543","title":{"rendered":"Using Russian"},"content":{"rendered":"
Using Russian: <\/strong>A guide to contemporary usage. 2nd edn. By Derek Offord <\/strong>and Natalia Gogolitsyna<\/strong>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xxxiii, 437. ISBN 9780521547611<\/a>. $45.99.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Picus S. Ding<\/strong><\/a>, Macao Polytechnic Institute<\/em> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In this revised and augmented edition, Derek Offord and Natalia Gogolitsyna provide an up-to-date guide to the contemporary usage of Russian. Consisting of twelve chapters, the book is intended for students of elementary Russian. Preceding the chapters, a ten-page glossary of linguistic terms introduces some relevant linguistic concepts.<\/p>\n

Ch. 1 (1\u201331) introduces the extensive range of Russian registers and dialects. Ch. 2 (32\u201372) illustrates these registers and dialects with real life examples from the mass media, cyberspace, political writing, and literary prose. Ch. 3 (73\u201397) deals with homonyms, homoforms, homographs, paronyms, and faux amis. Ch. 4 (98\u2013162) explores some common problems that occur in translating English into Russian, such as the verb to be<\/em>, modal auxiliary verbs, and transitivity.<\/p>\n

Ch. 5 (163\u2013202) investigates vocabulary and idioms in Russian, including neologisms, modal particles, interjections, vulgar language, proverbs, and sayings. Ch. 6 (203\u201327), which describes the use of Russian in everyday life, covers measurement, currency, numerals, time, telephone numbers, postal addresses, family relationships, acronyms and alphabetisms, and jokes and puns. Ch. 7 (228\u201351) moves on to verbal etiquette in a variety of situations, such as attracting attention, introductions, greetings, farewells, congratulations, wishing, gratitude, apologizing, requests, invitations, reassurance and condolence, compliments, telephone conversations, and letter writing.<\/p>\n

Ch. 8 (252\u201387), which discusses word formation in Russian, focuses on affixes on nouns, verbs, and adjectives as well as compounding. Ch. 9 (288\u2013332) addresses Russian inflection, which ranges from the declension of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and numerals to the system of verb conjugation and the formation of gerunds and participles. Ch. 10 (333\u201376) studies prepositions in terms of valency as well as verbal phrases that consist of verbs and prepositions. Ch. 11 (377\u2013432), which is devoted to the syntax of Russian, covers the case system, the use of pronouns, short adjectives, and numerals as well as a variety of verbal forms, conjunctions, punctuation, and capital letters. Ch. 12 (433\u201354) focuses on the placement of stress in adjectives, different classes of nouns, and various forms of verbs. Two indices are also included: one for Russian words, phrases, and affixes (455\u201386) and another for general terms (487\u201393).<\/p>\n

As a reference guide to the usage of contemporary Russian, this book provides an extremely detailed and useful description of the language. This book will be particularly valuable in enhancing the pragmatic competence of students of Russian, since some pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects of the language, such as style, register, and obscene language, are not likely to be delivered thoroughly in the classroom. However, in addition to the discussion of stress, the inclusion of a discussion of intonation would also be beneficial: something the authors may like to consider for a future edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Using Russian: A guide to contemporary usage. 2nd edn. By Derek Offord and Natalia Gogolitsyna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xxxiii, 437. ISBN 9780521547611. $45.99. Reviewed by Picus S. Ding, Macao Polytechnic Institute In this revised and augmented edition, Derek Offord and Natalia Gogolitsyna provide an up-to-date guide to the contemporary usage of Russian. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":544,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}