The paper presents an innovative approach for the index assessment of the acoustic properties of churches. A new formula for an approximate single number index to assess selected acoustic parameters of church interiors, such as reverberation time (RT), speech intelligibility index (RASTI) and music clarity index (C80), is presented in the paper. The formula is created by means of the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method. An innovative approach for calculating the weights of partial indices is shown by solving the problem of redundant information, i.e., the system of overdetermined linear equations, using a computed pseudoinverse matrix. The new procedures for calculating the values of three partial indices and the single number index to assess selected acoustic parameters are presented. The proposed method was verified by measurements in several selected churches.

The situation of perception, its structure, types and their verbalization attract the attention of not only psychologists but also linguists. Hearing, like sight, is one of the main sensory channels in human life. In this study, carried out with the help of lexical-semantic analysis, semantic-stylistic analysis and contextual analysis, the role of the vocabulary describing sounds in defining the situation of a miracle is presented (“miracle-vision”, “miraclephenomenon”, “voices from heaven”, etc.) and its relation to miracle markers. Miracles were chosen from Житiя святыхъ на русском языке изложенные по руководству Четиӽ Миней святителя Димитрия Ростовского, in which miracles are manifestations of God’s omnipotence. The research focuses mainly on verbs that describe sound and verbs that describe auditory perception. The study found that in addition to verbs describing sound and verbs describing auditory perception, miracle markers are also verbs describing visual and tactile perception. The quantitative and qualitative analysis allowed us to conclude that the verb of intentional auditory perception слушать does not occur in the text as a marker of a miracle situation, which may indicate the hagiographer’s goal – to show the unpredictability of a miracle.