Proper nouns as lacunas in Russian and their translation in Serbian

Abstract

Taking as a starting point the fact that the lacuna has occupied the attention of researchers not only from the basic lexical aspect, but also from that of word-formation, morpho-syntactic, phraseologico-paroemiologic and stylistic, as well as in terms of lexicographic and translational problems created in the contact of both related and non-related languages, the author claims that the issue of proper names manifested as a lacuna also demands a thorough linguistic analysis, which is at the core of this paper dealing with the lacuna within the range of Serbian and Russian language respectively. The cultural-historical background and socio-traditional specificity of the lacuna are viewed through the prism of proper nouns in contemporary Russian language (bearing in mind the problems of transposing them into contemporary Serbian language). The analysis is done on proper nouns and toponyms only, with other noun groups being discussed in general.