Russian historical lexicography: word-centered and text-centered approaches

In the article, the ambiguity of the concept “historical dictionary” is discussed, and the question of approaches and priorities in Russian historical lexicography is considered. Historical lexicography is interpreted as dictionaries describing the written material of the previous eras, i.e. such data are recorded and random. While describing the lexicon of a conditionally united language state, various approaches are used, the most demanded of which in historical lexicography are word-centered and text-centered approaches. The word-centered approach focuses on the word as a unit of the lexical-semantic system, a complex of senses and connotations. When the text-centered approach is used, the word is characterized as a text component, the text is the main source of information about the word. Reflections about the theoretical bases of Russian historical lexicography (focus on the word, the system or the text) come out into the concrete sphere of dictionary compiling, and influence the solution of the central lexicographic questions. From the point of view of different approaches, the article discusses the solutions to the questions of making up glossaries (namely, the question of inclusion of proper names: both direct onyms and proper names formed on the basis of common nouns, in particular nicknames and microtoponyms, onym derivatives (ethnonyms, adjectives derived from ethnonyms and toponyms) and compound words with a frequent common element), interpretation of semantics (in particular, interpretation of relative adjectives and conditionally author’s material), reconstruction of the initial form of a word. Thus, representation of language material in historical lexicography in its traditional sense is determined not only by the range of the described period in the past (diachronic / synchronic dictionaries) and not only by showing the development of the lexicon (dynamic / registering dictionary) but also by the degree of the remoteness of the described chronological periods, i.e. the approach used in a separate historical dictionary in many respects is determined by linguistic material. When describing the lexicon of considerably remote eras, application of the text-centred approach is reasonable since thus the historical dictionary becomes a thesaurus, and each lexical unit (taking into account the limited amount of the material) receives its own semantic description. When describing a different national language state (first of all, in modern explanatory lexicography), application of the word-centered approach is admissible.

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