“All we have is means”: Ursula K. Le Guin’s utopianism as ongoingness

Author(s): Alexis Shotwell / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2024

This article argues that we can affirm the impulse to change our current course and start over, while rejecting the idea that new beginnings take us out of our social and historical embeddedness. Instead, I propose using Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction and anarchist attention to process and “ongoingness” as a political good. Bringing her novels The Lathe of Heaven (1971) and The Dispossessed (1974) into conversation with contemporary movements for prison abolition, this essay ask show her imperfect utopianism contributes to understandings of political prefiguration, process, and the idea that social transformation must be an ongoing project.

Messy utopianism and the question of war: What does “staying with the trouble” mean in relation to war?

Author(s): Kilian Jörg / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2024

Donna Haraway’ s formula “staying with the trouble” frequently appears in discourses concerned with ecological catastrophe. Despite their ostentatious rejection of utopian thinking, Haraway and like-minded thinkers tend to consider messiness, tension or even conflict as antithetical to their ideal state of (no longer only human) society. A cultivation of a specific life-promoting and enabling messiness and ambiguity, however, is essential for nourishing new forms of a minoritarian, “messy” utopianism. This article reflectson contemporary utopianism’ s relation to war: do contemporary utopias address war explicitly or implicitly? In this context, bolo’ bolo (1983), written by sci-fi author and anarchist P. M. (a pseudonym of Hans Widmer), can serve as a helpful reference. This speculative utopia sketches out a different relation to conflict and its underlying presumptions of stately order, property, control and subjective self-determination. It proposes to conceive of violence as something not akin to war and thus offers a welcome alternative to simplistic notions of a “natural state”, in which humans are determined either by a bellicose or a peaceful inclination. This approach fills important gaps in the discussion of no-longer-modern utopianisms.

LA CONDITION HUMAINE/HUMAN CONDITION. A Literary Interpretation of “Veiller sur elle” through a Semiotic Reading of Tomasso’s Story within a Story

Author(s): Olivia-Cristina Rusu / Language(s): English Issue: 41/2024

This article explores Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s novel “Veiller sur elle”, from a semiotic perspective and shows how complex themes and aspects of human existence are constructed and conveyed through narrative techniques such as symbols and stories within stories. Building on Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic triangle as a theoretical framework, this analysis reveals how symbols and imagery function as semiotic triggers that draw upon complex interpretations of the human condition. Linking semiotic processes to aspects of the human condition - such as the quest for knowledge, the power of imagination, the contemplation of mortality, the pursuit of artistic immortality and protection – this article shows how multifaceted layers of literary texts reveal universal human themes.

Българистиката в полето на съвременната хуманитаристика

Author(s): Georgi Gospodinov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2025

Житейска история и художествена интерпретация. Творчеството на Атанас Далчев в учебниците по литература за средно образование

Author(s): Nadezhda Stoyanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2025

The paper focuses on the complicated inclusion of Atanas Dalchev’s work in the list of studied authors in Bulgarian secondary education after 1944. Although he had the reputation of one of the most significant Bulgarian poets, his influence on the younger generations was defined as negative by the socialist realists. Dalchev’s poetic principles maintained the distance between “reality” and literary convention, between author and Lyrical Self, which, however, confronted the Socialist realists’ idea about the social character of literature. This was one of the reasons why the poet’s work was left out of the school canon until 1980s and on its turn provoked a number of critical strategies that aimed to rehabilitate the author by including his works in the literary-historical process and by legitimizing his aesthetic system. The main object of the paper is the reception of Atanas Dalchev during Socialism, but at the end some trends in the textbooks published after 1989 are also noted.

Мястото на Светослав Минков в учебните програми по литература

Author(s): Mariya Ruseva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2025

The paper is focused on the presence of the writer Svetoslav Minkov in Bulgarian literature curricula before and after 1989 until his exclusion according to the latest Ordinance No 5 from 2015 of the National Education Standards of Bulgaria. In People’s Republic of Bulgaria, the appearance of Minkov’s works is sporadic and ideologically oriented, while during the years after 1989, the inclusion of the author with his stories with fantastical elements written in the 1930s corresponds with the emerging tendency towards universalization and focus on common human values while studying literature in school. The article argues that the presence of Svetoslav Minkov in Bulgarian literature curricula steps on the possibility of creating intellectual provocation for the students while analyzing the literary text and perceiving the empirical reality.

Кръгът „Мисъл“ за мястото на Ботев сред „великите мъртви“

Author(s): Anna Alexieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2025

The paper is focused on how the image of the poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev was shaped according to the figures, belonging to the “Misal” (“Thought”) Literary Circle. There was no consent about how Botev should be thought. According to Pencho Slaveykov, he “could hardly be nominated as a good poet”. For Yavorov, Botev was “one of the gods, who ascended to the Earth”. Special attention was paid to the hierarchy of the “great dead people” (following the phrase by dr. Krastyo Krastev) and the place of Hristo Botev amongst them. Chronologically considered, in the first papers, written by Slaveykov and Krastev, published in the last decade of XIX c., the image of Botev was everything, but high ranked national hero. They put particular accent on his uncontrollability and anarchic attitude. He was also heavily criticized as a poet. The study states that all the variations of the way Botev was regarded by “Misal” figures could be explained by the memory about him, which was still personal experience based, communicative (Assmann), and its transformation into a cultural one, the foundation of the literary canon, was still to come. However, Botev was institutionalized as national hero in a relatively monolithic and positive narrative during the second decade of XX c., when communicative memory transformed into a cultural one. Therefore, in the late texts by dr. Krastev, Botev was nominated as genius, lifted considerably above all of his contemporaries.

Категорията падеж в първите граматики на българския език

Author(s): Encho Tilev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2025

The subject of research in this article are three grammar books of the Bulgarian language from the Bulgarian revival – “Bolgarska grammatika” by Neofit Rilski, “Slavenobolgarskoe detovodstvo” by Neofit Bozveli and Emanuil Vaskidovich and “Grammatika slaveno-bolgarska” by Hristaki Pavlovich. The purpose of the study is to trace how the case category is described in them. The initial hypothesis is that in all three grammar books there is a strong influence of Russian grammar books from the 18th and 19th centuries. This is proven in the course of the research, and when describing the case, the authors follow the language patterns in Greek, Church Slavonic and Russian. This classification of cases strongly influenced further grammatical works until the end of the 19th century.

Прагматични стратегии в текста. Алиенация

Author(s): Mihaela Moskova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2025

It is well known that Bulgarian lacks coordination of tenses in complex sentences. This allows for various temporal combinations to be realized in the main and subordinate clauses. This is also the minimal necessary condition for implementing the pragmatic strategy of expressing the viewpoints of both the current speaker and the participant in the action being discussed, which R. Nitsolova calls empathy. The interesting aspect here is that when the two positions coincide, the current speaker can describe the event from the participant‘s perspective, with this difference usually having grammatical dimensions. R. Nitsolova notes that this is the preferred way of presenting the event. In this work, another possible pragmatic strategy is outlined, through which the speaker uses the available linguistic means to „remove“ the participant‘s position when they necessarily occupy it (when talking about themselves).

Самобитният ритъм на битието като задача на философията

Author(s): Nikolay Turlakov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2024

This work can be seen as a kind of continuation of the main topic in my essay “Notes on the Assimetrical Rhythm of Being, or What is Philosophy with a Soul”. Here I make a new attempt to support the thesis why the understanding and study of what I call the “unique Rhythm of Being” is an important and relevant philosophical task.I call the non-proprietary (not arising from itself) rhythm of being that which appears in the self-reflection of thinking as pure logos thinking. On the contrary, the self-existent (arising in Ereignis from the Being itself) Rhythm of Being is theMeaning we understand from our existential being-in-the-world as we are involved in a situation of one story and concern.

Наблюдения върху един ненормативен формообразувателен модел в съвременния български език

Author(s): Krasimira Angelova Chakarova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

The study examines a group of negative verb forms denoting relative posteriority, in which the negation marker is placed before the full (or second auxiliary) verb rather than in the initial position: compare the examples щях да не забележа; щеше да не си (различен); щял съм да не се съглася; щяха да не зависят; щели да не вземат; щял бил да не докосва, etc., with the normative pattern: нямаше да забележа, нямаше да си (различен), нямало да се съглася, нямаше да зависят, нямало да вземат. Notably, such forms are rarely discussed in systematic Bulgarian grammars but are observed in contemporary oral and written communication. The study aims to: 1) identify the reasons for this deviation from the normative formation of verb forms describing relative posteriority by analysing the linguistic contexts in which these forms occur; 2) determine their status within the verb system (whether they represent acceptable variants or deviations). The analysis also incorporates survey data, providing insights into native speakers’ attitudes towards the studied verb forms.

Морфоструктура на показателните и притежателните местоимения

Author(s): Desislava Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

The aim of the study is to present models for the morpheme segmentation of demonstrative and possessive pronouns by describing the specifics of the inflections and suffixes that take part in their formation. The changes that have occurred in the morpheme structure of demonstrative pronouns used to indicate persons and non-persons (cf.: тъ and този, та and тази, то and това, те and тези) are linked to the need to distinguish these pronouns from the newly established third-person personal pronouns (той, тя, то, те). This has also resulted in changes to the morpheme structure. The morpheme structure of possessive pronouns, which are etymologically related to personal pronouns, is also a focus of our research due to the specifics of their formation. The nuclear morpheme carries the semantics of the personal pronominal forms, while the suffixes are derived from the paradigm of relational adjectives.

Принципи на флективното описание на глаголните съставни лексикални единици в български

Author(s): Svetla Koeva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

This article presents the general principles for the inflectional description of verbal mul-tiword expressions in Bulgarian. Two main criteria are applied: the maintenance of the relation to the inflectional description of simple words in Bulgarian and the presentation of the minimal grammatical information necessary for a standardised description of the forms of verbal multiword expressions. The paper also provides a brief outline of the formalism used to define local grammars, which are compiled into finite-state transducers that recognise and generate the forms of verbal multiword expressions, along with the associated grammatical information.

Флективно описание на съставни наименования в българския език (изследване на двусъставните географски названия)

Author(s): Svetlozara Leseva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

This article explores the grammatical and semantic characteristics of two-component compound proper names in Bulgarian, with a particular focus on geographical names, aiming to define their inflectional types and integrate them into the respective dictionary entries. The study is based on lexical units automatically extracted from internet sources, including structured resources such as Wikipedia. These units were manually filtered and categorised according to the type of referent, e.g. town, village, mountain, spring, etc. As a result, the initial dataset of 4,000 candidates was reduced to approximately 2,600 entries. The selected names were automatically POS-tagged and analysed in terms of their syntactic structure, lexical and grammatical categories, inflectional properties, defectivity, etc. These features collectively determine the inflectional type of each named entity. The inflectional types enable both the generation of inflected forms and their recognition in free text.

Оценъчната семантика като фактор за парадигматична непълнота: глаголи за поведение

Author(s): Elena Yu. Ivanova,Ivelina Stoyanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

This study analyses a group of Bulgarian activity verbs whose semantics includes an evaluative component, e.g. важнича, маниернича, подмилквам се, театралнича, etc. The verbs denote a set of similar actions performed by person X while also conveying an evaluation of these actions from the speaker’s perspective. Due to their evaluative semantic component, such verbs exhibit paradigmatic restrictions, as well as limitations in the realisation of their forms. Based on a corpus sample comprising usage examples of 25 verbs extracted from the Bulgarian National Corpus, this study examines restrictions on the grammatical forms (specifically in terms of person and number), the specific uses of verb tenses and the formation of synthetic imperative forms. The data on the usage of evaluative verbs are compared with statistical data on the usage of behaviour verbs that lack an evaluative component. Our observations enable us to determine the place of behaviour verbs within the semantic typology of predicates. This group of verbs is typically assigned an intermediate, special status. Our findings indicate that behaviour verbs share characteristics with the semantic class of activity verbs. While their semantics (particularly the evaluative component and the fact that the subject of the activity and the subject of the evaluation are different) may impose certain restrictions on their realisation, based on the analysed data, none of the proper-ties under discussion fully prevent the realisation of their grammatical forms.

Лексемата бушон и нейните метафорични и фразеологични проекции

Author(s): Dilyana Dencheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

The article examines the metaphorical projections of the lexeme fuse and the phrases in which it functions as a component. Specifically, it analyses the expressions someone’s fuses blew and fuses blew in terms of their formal structure, variation, paradigms, semantics, origin and other relevant characteristics. The study rejects the hypothesis that the two units share a common origin and instead proposes that they have under-gone distinct processes of phraseologisation, resulting in different internal forms. It is concluded that the identical formal structure and divergent semantics of the expressions exemplify phraseological homonymy. Additionally, the article analyses the conventional metaphorical projections of the lexeme fuse in terms of their stylistic characteristics, semantics, frequency and viability, while also looking for potential connections with the aforementioned expressions. The capacity of fuse to function as a novel metaphor and to contribute to other types of tropes, such as similes, is emphasised. Furthermore, the study examines the dynamics of its various metaphorical projections, noting the increasing frequency and prominence of some and the decline of others. Particular attention is given to the innovative uses of phrases, where techniques and devices characteristic of poetic language are employed. The analysis demonstrates their adaptability across a broad range of discursive contexts, including poetry, journalistic texts and online forum discussions.

За модалните ще да-форми в българския език

Author(s): Verka Sasheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

The article investigates the specific characteristics and frequency of use of the Bulgarian ще да forms across different communication domains, such as fiction and spoken communication, by identifying the most common presumptive forms. The analysis is preceded by a thorough review of the existing literature and a summary of various perspectives on the status of presumptive forms. The study also explores the relation-ship between these modal forms and certain grammatical categories. Two working hypotheses are tested: one suggesting that the present and perfect tense forms are the ones predominantly used in spoken language, and the other proposing that they have stylistically limited usage, specific to particular communication domains.

Аналитични глаголни форми или синтактични конструкции

Author(s): Viara Maldjieva,Ruska Stancheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

This paper addresses the challenge of distinguishing analytic wordforms within the verb paradigm from syntactic groups (phrases) based solely on formal criteria. The syntactic and morphological properties of verb phrases containing auxiliary verbs are examined with the aim of establishing clear formal criteria for classifying them either as part of the verb paradigm or as free word combinations (simple groups). As a result of this analysis, a coherent formal definition of analytic verb forms is proposed. Additionally, a part of the study is devoted to examining the inconsistencies in normative rules arising from the current interpretation of analytic verb forms.

Синтактичната група глагол + прилагателно име – формални особености и нормативни аспекти

Author(s): Tatyana Aleksandrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

This article examines the formal characteristics of syntactic groups consisting of a verb and a dependent adjective, focusing on morphological accommodation and connotation as the two primary mechanisms for constructing grammatically correct expressions. The study outlines the structural features that give rise to normative issues in standard language use. Furthermore, it analyses several normative problems related to the realisation of verb + adjective groups in sentence structure, with particular attention to accommodation in the grammatical categories of number, gender and polarity. The causes of fluctuations are explored, and normative recommendations are provided.

Техники на разширение на прости групи с прилагателно и съществително

Author(s): Malina Stoycheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

This article examines simple syntactic groups consisting of a head noun and a modifying adjective, focusing on the ways these groups can be expanded. Specifically, the study explores which parts of speech may extend each member of the simple syntactic group to the left and right. The analysis draws on examples from the Bulgarian National Corpus.