Russian Colloquial Vocabulary of the Late 16th and the 17th Centuries

The aim of the article is to detect lexical elements making the basis of future colloquial speech in the light of research of the colloquial speech formation in Old Russian. Colloquial speech is a dynamic phenomenon which can be interpreted from the functional (as a subsystem of the standard language) and stylistic (as language means) points of view. Heterogeneity and historical variability of the colloquial speech category are important. The material of the research is formed by seven volumes of the Dictionary of the Russian Vernacular of Muscovite Rus of the I6thl7th Centuries and its card file stored in Saint Petersburg State University. The course of the research assumed finding answers to the following questions: What is the status of colloquial speech in the history of language? What are the criteria for distinguishing colloquial lexicon in the Russian language of the 16th-17th centuries? What lexicographic interpretation should this lexicon have in a historical dictionary? To answer these questions, the following methods were used: an introspective method (observation, generalization, analysis, classification), a method of a systematic lexicographic description by dictionary parameters, a method of dictionary definition analysis. As a result of the analysis, the following conclusions were drawn: (1) Colloquial speech during the pre-national period of Russian is not a functional system yet (as a system it can be reconstructed only from the 18th century), but a stylistic category in the form of separate elements, first of all, lexical. During this period, colloquial lexicon used in everyday communication cannot be separated from the emerging vernacular. (2) When detecting words of a colloquial nature, it is necessary to take into account a number of criteria (and their combination): a lexico-semantic criterion (the colloquial character of lexicon is indicated by the everyday or complex semantics of lexemes, figurative colloquial situational sense of a neutral word); a functional criterion (the sphere of daily communication, the ordinariness of a situation; the type of text is important: the greatest number of words of a colloquial nature is found in phrasebooks, recordings of interrogations, private letters); a stylistic criterion; a word-formation criterion (derivation according to specific models); the criterion of correlation with a neutral equivalent. (3) The lexicographic interpretation of this material in the historical dictionary of the pre-national period cannot include labels “vernacular” or “colloquial”. General stylistic labels indicating emotional and expressive coloring of a lexeme is possible, this expressive and intensive component of meaning can also be indicated through a descriptive interpretation. Situational figurative senses and situational uses as rudiments of structures emerging in the modern language must be given in the dictionary.

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