"Svetilo" more or less awkward than "Zvezda"?

[Edward M Dumanis]

Since my mailing program does not display Cyrillic fonts, I cannot comment 
on the previous messages but can only guess their content. Sorry but I do 
not have time now to run them through a conversion program. However, I can 
comment on this new branch of the previous thread.
There is no problem in Russian in combining masculine and feminine nouns 
in description of the same person. For example, "Batalov - zvezda 
sovetskogo kino" or "Furtseva byla ministrom kul'tury SSSR." However, 
"svetilo" is not luminary. It can be used only in the area of science and 
mathematics. It cannot be use in industry. For example, "svetilo gornogo 
dela" sounds very awkwood.  "Mr. Pitt - eto svetilo Amerikanskogo 
bibliotechnogo dela" sounds a bit awkwood as well.

Sincerely,

Edward Dumanis <dumanis at buffalo.edu>


On Fri, 11 Jan 2008, Margarita Orlova wrote:

> Svetilo has about the same connotations as "a big guy"; the word requires to 
> restrict the area of its use: Mr Pitt eto svetilo Amerikanskogo + 
> bibliotehnogo dela. On - svetilo Amerikanskoj +genetiki.
> On - Amerikanskoe linguistiheskoe svetilo sounds a bit awkward, though it is 
> possible to see such usage on the Web. Most probably, there is a rule there 
> working to move the adjective down the syntactic tree, to define the limiting 
> area instead of defining svetilo itself.
>
> Margarita A Orlova
> Graduate Student in Linguistics, SJSU
> PhD in Russian
> http://rent-a-mind.com/margarita/

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