Variability in grammar of poetic texts and their computer correction (on the material of the anthology Poetry of Moscow University: from Lomonosov to...)

It is widely known that the Russian poetry of the 19th and even the 20th century is rich with neologisms, as well as deviations from contemporary grammar rules. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of Microsoft ® Word 2016 Spell Check by processing poetic works posted on the website "Poetry of Moscow University: from Lomonosov to . . ." and in books of the same anthology. This book series started with Volume 1 From Mikhail Lomonosov to Nikolay Tsertelev published on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Moscow State University by Vodoley Publishers with an introductory article of the publisher (E. V. Vitkovsky). Numerous quotations from poems written in the 19th-20th centuries exemplify particular lexical and grammatical features dictated by the practices of versification. An attempt is made to identify and explain the response of MS Word, not always proper, to neologisms and deviations from norms of modern grammar of Russian in poetic lines. The Word Spell Check does not always properly react to neologisms and other deviations from the modern grammar norms of the Russian language: this reaction is analyzed in the article. So, the author tested it on quotations from poems by Nikolay Karamzin, Vasily Zhukovsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dos-toevsky, as well as by some authors who composed verses in the 20th century. The latter studied and / or worked at Moscow State University: Sergey Solovyov, Boris Pasternak, Nikolay Zabolotsky, Mikhail Svetlov, Aleksandr Mezhirov, Valentin Berestov, Nikolay Shatrov, Mikhail Gasparov, Vadim Bogoslovsky. All the poems were taken from www.poesis.ru. In this poetry, it was quite common to discard an "excessive" syllable for harmonization purposes, so that two vowels merged into one syllable. Alternatively, the number of syllables sometimes was artificially increased to keep the proper metre. The resulting word forms often could not be recognized by the spell check since they are not present in the system dictionary. The MS Word Spell Check hints for correction of highlighted words are not always adequate in case the checked word deviates from the prescriptive form by several letters. A typical mistake of the suggested replacement is separation of a long word into a couple of shorter words without concord. Moreover, suggestions often contain low-frequency words or proper nouns, which litter system dictionaries and prevent from finding typos and spelling errors. As exemplified above, Microsoft ® Word 2016 Spell Check (as well as its previous versions) does not always recognize the specifics of poetic lexis, which are noted in general purpose dictionaries and grammar references. The author acknowledges that many flaws and gaps addressed to in previous articles or reported by internet users have been eliminated in recent MS Word versions. Nevertheless, there are still many questions to the quality of the Russian language dictionary and the spell check hints used in this text editor.

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