Principles of Larins lexicography in the three-volume BigDictionary of Proverbs, Sayings and Similes of the Russian language

The articlepresents the basic principles of dictionaries creation, which were developed by ProfessorB.A. Larin and his scientific school: the principle of complete glossary, the principle of acomprehensive description of vocables, the principle of accurate certification of thematerial, the principle of temporal and spatial characteristics of the described units, theprinciple of historicism. They became a guide to the three-volume Big Dictionary ofProverbs, Sayings and Similes of the Russian Language (2008-2010). Its authors areV.M. Mokienko, T.G. Nikitina and E.K. Nikolaeva. The total number of units described inthe dictionary is 155 000.The card file for dictionaries, numbering about 300 000 units, was compiled for over40 years and is stored in the Inter-chair Vocabulary Room named after B.A. Larin (SPSU).Sources of filing and, accordingly, dictionaries are extracts from the collections of Russianfolklore, materials from fiction, fixation of phraseology of mass media, proverbs, andcomparisons of literary and idiomatic, dialect and slang dictionaries and card files, materialof records of modern speech and answers to questionnaires by a special author program.1. The principle of lexicographic completeness. The three volumes of the dictionarygive a synthetic description of nationwide phraseology of the national language, that is, thelexical corpus includes both folk idioms and literary idioms, including many phrases ofinternational origin.2. The principle of accurate certification of the material allows localizing each proverbin our dictionaries in time and space.3. The principle of temporal and spatial characteristics of the described units. Eachsaying in our dictionary is precisely localized on the map of Russia. The main purpose ofsuch a certification is to give to the reader the most accurate and complete chronologicaland spatial characteristics of units. Accurate material certification is especially valuablebecause it allows proving mathematically the "persistence" of folklore of the small genre inspace and time.4. The principle of retrospective linguistic and cultural characteristics. Retrospectivelinguistic and cultural information is offered in the dictionary as required, and decoding ofthe interpreted image is given. Frequently, such decoding is detailed historical andetymological or linguistic-cultural information.5. The principle of comprehensive descriptions of vocables allows approaching thedefinition of proverbs and sayings more differentially and supposes a system characteristicof each described word. Most of the units in our dictionaries are described by a singlecoherent and detailed composition: 1) vocable expression, 2) stylistic characteristics(usage, the scope of distribution, the expressive and stylistic qualification), 3) accurate andcomplete interpretation of the meaning, 4) accurate certification of source, 5) explanationof history and etymology, interpretation (especially of dialect, slang or foreign language) ofincomprehensible words in the proverb or saying.