Abstract: The article examines the issue of applying of the complex dynamic systems theory elements in the field of teaching foreign languages, analyzing the use of the Internet, cognitive poetics, and journalism. In all these areas, the attractor model is mainly used. An attractor is a potential state of a system to which it is evolving. The semantics of the term is clearly dominated by the meaning of attraction. The article presents the justification of the methodological aspect in the application of the attractor model in various fields of science. An overview of domestic and foreign works in these fields is given, and various types of attractors are considered. Special attention is paid to cognitive poetics, a relatively new field of cognitive linguistics that systematically explores the relationship between the literary texts structure and their perception and conceptualization. In cognitive poetics, attractors influence the level of discourse by creating attention-attracting text objects. New types of textual attractors are proposed – neologisms (nonword), as well as elements of non-trivial lexical phrase that are not collocations. A lexical unit is a textual attractor if it attracts the reader's attention. The proof that a nonword attracts attention is that it introduces dissonance into the text, or that the lexical solution takes longer time. The proof that a nontrivial phrase can be considered a textual attractor is an increase in the reaction time to this phrase. The main contribution of the author to the study of the topic can be called the presentation of two types of new textual attractors, namely nonword and non-trivial phrase. The study of the structure and methods of producing individual author's occasional nonwords and non-trivial phrases that act as attractors in a V. Pelevin’s dystopian novel is carried out.

Abstract: The subject of this research is the polysemous noun “game” in the Russian language and the nouns “play”, “game”, “acting”,” performance” in the English language that correspond to different spheres of activity, denoted by the word “game”. The goal of this article consists in determination of most frequent universal collocations with game component in the Russian discourse and their translation equivalents with play, game, acting, and performance component in the English-American discourse. The collocations with game component formed by the scheme adjective + noun and noun + noun, acquired from the dictionaries, as well as Russian and English-American text corpora, served as the material for this research. The article employs the following methods: definitional analysis, contrastive analysis, and etymological analysis. The application of contrastive analysis allowed determining the linear and vector correspondences between the schemes of the indicated lexemes play, game, acting, and performance, as well as revealing the ethno-cultural lacunae. Examination of collocations with game component was conducted on the basis of the Russian National Corpus, Corpus of Historically American English, and Corpus of Contemporary American English; various dictionaries in the timespan (1810-1900) and (2000-2018). It was established that majority of the ten most frequent collocations according to the aforementioned schemes from the Russian National Corpus are present in the Corpus of Historically American English and Corpus of Contemporary American English in the same contexts, but different frequency. The article provides the examples of ethnocultural collocations with game components in the Russian and English-American discourse. It is demonstrated that collocation with the parametric adjectival “big game” has both universal and ethno-cultural characteristics in the English-American language. The relevance of the work is substantiated by recent interest in the development of collocation competence in learning a foreign language.

Abstract: The subject of this research is the determination of common and different aspects in evolutionary transformations of the borrowed concepts in various linguocultures. The object of this research is the borrowed concepts of “reserve” in the Russian linguoculture and such in the French and English. The author examines the frequency characteristics of lexemes – representative concepts, semantic saturation, and structure of the concepts depending on the time and historical events in the Russian, French and English linguocultures. The ways of infiltration from the original language to recipient language are reviewed. Analysis is conducted by means of etymological, definitive, comparative and contrastive methods based on the material of national corpuses of indicated languages by appealing to dictionaries data. It is demonstrated that in the XVIII-XIX centuries the concept of “reserve” was segmental in all three languages and had three segments: “military affair”, “financial-economic activity” and “personality traits”. However, the structure of the concept of “reserve” in the Russian language has undergone transformations: the “personality traits” segment was eliminated, while in the French and English languages the conceptual attributes of personality traits” segment of the concept of “reserve” relevant back in the XVIII century, have survived to this day. The author explores the possible reasons of elimination of the segment of “personality traits” in the Russian language.