The lexicon of the modern Russian language: describing normative and stylistic characteristics in the dictionary database

The article deals with the normative and stylistic characteristics of the lexicon in the academic dictionaries of the Russian language and their reflection in the electronic dictionary database (EDD). Each normative dictionary adopts certain principles of vocabulary normative qualification; however, in practice, it is very difficult, if at all possible, to apply objective criteria for stylistic labels, and dictionaries are not always consistent and often contradictory in how they label words. Meanwhile, users of dictionaries need to know what stylistic register corresponds to a particular word. The data on labels from many (all) dictionaries collected for one word can provide a relevant user’s guide. Academic dictionaries have a reference part in the dictionary entry, but the size of the traditional dictionary limits the information about labels the word has been associated with throughout its “dictionary history”: this is possible only in electronic form, although not in an electronic dictionary that duplicates a “paper” dictionary, but in the electronic dictionary database (EDD). The EDD is developed on the basis of the Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language and on its principles. The principles and issues of forming the stylistic reference part in the EDD for words with stylistic, terminological and temporal labels are described. However, collecting information about how the labels accompanied the word in academic dictionaries of different time and different types faced a number of difficulties caused by the different depth of the semantic development of the word in a dictionary, the difference in the approaches of the authors of dictionaries to normality, and the change in the status of the word itself in the system of literary language. Nevertheless, the survey of the formulation of usage labels shows how the interpreted word was perceived by lexicographers at different epochs, while text illustrations in the dictionary entry in the EDD, indicating the year of publication of the source, will help the user of the database to relate the proposed stylistic characteristic of the word with its use in modem speech and draw conclusions about the extent to which this or that label corresponds to the language reality.

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