... In this trenchant and lively study Brian McHale undertakes to construct a version of postmodernist fiction which encompasses forms as wide-ranging as North American metafiction, Latin American magic realism, the French New New Novel, concrete prose and science fiction. Considering a variety of theoretical approaches including those of Ingarden, Eco, Dolezel, Pavel, and Hrushovski, McHale shows that the common denominator is postmodernist fiction's ability to thrust its own ontological status into the foreground and to raise questions about the world (or worlds) in which we live. Far from being, as unsympathetic critics have sometimes complained, about nothing but itself -- or even about nothing at all -- postmodernist fiction in McHale's construction of it proves to be about (among other things) those hardy literary perennials, Love and Death. itself in our critical and theoretical discourses. We have a,--- postmodern architecture, a postmodern dance, perhaps even a postmodern philosophy and a postmodern condition. But do we have a postmodernist fiction? Brian McHale undertakes to construct a version capacious enough to include North American metafiction, Latin American magic realism, the French New New Novel, concrete prose and science fiction, to name but a few of its forms. The common denominator is postmodernist fiction's ability to thrust its own ontological status into the foreground and to raise questions about the world (or worlds) in which we live. Exploiting various theoretical approaches to literary ontology - those of Ingarden, Eco, Dolezel, Pavel, Hrushovski and others - and ranging widely over contemporary world literature, McHale assembles a comprehensive repertoire of postmodernist fiction's strategies of world-making and -unmaking. Far from being, as unsympathetic critics have sometimes complained, about nothing but itself or even about nothing at all, postmodernist fiction in McHale's construction of it proves to be about (among other things) those hardy literary perennials, Love and Death. "This is one of the most lively and lucid studies of contemporary fiction around. Whether or not you agree with his provocative definition of the postmodern, McHale's argument is always engaging, bold, and forceful.

Linda Hutcheon

The article is a contribution to the theory and practice of teaching German phonetics to Bulgarian learners. It focuses on German labialized front vowels which have no equivalents in Bulgarian. The study is carried out in two directions: (a) a contrastive analysis of German labialized front vowels and Bulgarian vowel phonemes, aimed at predicting possible pronunciation errors, and (b) a diagnosis of errors in the production of German labialized front vowels made by Bulgarian advanced learners.

This is a contrastive study of the distributive and attenuative Aktionsart (mode of action), based on data from Modern Ukrainian and Bulgarian. The following issues are considered: productivity of the Aktionsart (approximate number of lexemes); formal diversity of the exponents (number and relative productivity of the respective word-formative markers in the two languages); distribution of each formal marker, i. e. characterization of the source verbs in terms of lexical semantics, Aktionsart, aspect, in/transitivity; possibility for the formal marker (prefix) to occur as a second to the root affix; stylistic colouring of the derivative verbs; relationship between each Aktionsart and the perfective/imperfective opposition and hence, the position of the respective Aktionsart in the aspectual system of the language.

This is a data-based study of the native speech production of Russians residing in Bulgaria, which reveals disturbed communicative competence. It is suggested that systematic investigations of this kind could throw some light on the mechanisms of language contact and language change (including diachrony). Such studies can also contribute to the theory of contrastive analysis of Bulgarian with other languages. Finally, certain inferences could be made concerning language teaching.

The functional-semantic field of the conclusive (inferential) modality is analysed across Bulgarian and Byelorussian. The source language is Bulgarian in which this modality is grammaticized. It is expressed by the forms of the inferential mood (Modus Conclusivus). The author renders the full paradigm of the Conclusive as well as some non-grammatical means functioning at the periphery of the field. The most common Byelorussian inferential modificators are also given and their use is exemplified.

The paper deals with some characteristics of the French plus-que-parfait in contrast with Bulgarian. After analysing the morphological similarities and differences of the corresponding tenses in the contrasted languages, the author dwells on a specific, though limited in use, function of the plus-que-parfait to set up a secondary narrative line. Its tendency to merge with the aorist is considered as closely related to and dependent on the merger of the aorist and passé composé observed in the spoken language. The translation problems arising from the incongruence of the contrasted language systems have also been discussed.

The paper describes grammatical means of forming possessive adjectives in modern Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian and Russian. Productivity and use of possessive adjectives in these languages are discussed. A comparison is made between the frequency of occurrence of possessive adjective constructions and that of possessive genitive constructions.

This is a cross-language study of the ship-building two-root terms across Bulgarian, Russian, English, German and French aiming at establishing the degree of isomorphism in their structural meaning (i. e. the literal meaning, the sense, not the vocabulary meaning). In the formation of the Bulgarian terms foreign term-building patterns, mostly Russian, are found to predominate. The authors offer some practical suggestions as to how to modify those terms exhibiting inconsistencies between form and meaning definition.

The subject under discussion is the word family with root morphemes град-/город- in the standard and local Russian dialects over the 19th and 20 th centuries. The author contends that the continual coexistence of words with either the Old Bulgarian nepolnoglasje (vocally reduced root morpheme) град-, or the East Slavic polnoglasje (full root morpheme) город-, has resulted in a significant shift in their use in literary Russian, brought about largely by the standard norms of usage. The words with an Old Bulgarian root morpheme, whether borrowed or locally derived, seem to make up a secondary layer in the localized Russian dialects, the vocally reduced forms preserving a number of the Old Bulgarian characteristics.

In Hungarian, there is a specific verbal category, known as object-definiteness, which is characterized by „the presence (or absence) of a definite 3rd person grammatical object“. The article discusses this category and the so-called definite conjugation of verbs. In search of equivalents for this grammatical category in Bulgarian, a list of the uses with verbs of the clytics го ‘him, it’, я ‘her’ and ги ‘them’ is compiled. After analysing 13 sentence functions of these movable form-formatives, the author shows how go ‘him, it’ evolved from a morpheme with the function of a doubled object (identifying reference) to an independent anaphorizer (or cataphorizer) of a distant familiar (definite) object. Summarizing the results of the contrastive analysis, the author draws the following conclusions: (1) the real function of the definite conjugation is to signal the object (definite direct object) if it is not expressed in the sentence; (2) the category of definiteness could also be applied to the Bulgarian verb; (3) in Bulgarian, there are affix-like particles for optional indication of the object, the recipient and even the beneficiary, and not only when it is a 3rd person object (or indirect object) at that.

The paper presents the results of a psycholinguistic experiment carried out with 50 native speakers of Bulgarian and 25 native speakers of Russian. Eighteen Russian compound sentences with the conjunction a and their synonymous transformational variants with the conjunctions но and и were given to the Russian native speakers as a stimulus for evaluation. Adequate translation equivalents of the same sentences were given to the Bulgarian native speakers. The informants were asked to evaluate the correctness of each sentence on a scale of 7 (with 1 presenting the least appropriate). The data were subjected to a three-factor dispersion analysis. Thus, a complete interlingual semantic equivalence between the conjunctions a, но and и in the two languages was established and the semantic areas in which conjunctional synonymy is possible were determined.