When people, simple people and pundits, reflect on the relationship between language and life, catchy epistemological metaphors such as "language is a mirror of being", "language is a part of being" or the famous Heidegger formula "language is the house of being"are born. And although the essence of the matter is noticeably coarsened by such sayings, they definitely grasp and reflect the main thing in the mentioned ratio. This is the main thing - the indissoluble connection of language and the surrounding life reflected in it. Indeed, when being is orderly and calm, the life of language is equally measured and serene. The latter, of course, changes after changes in the surrounding life, but for its carriers such changes are almost imperceptible due to their naturalness, gradualness and quantitative smallness. When times of unrest and existential catastrophes come, the rhythms of all language processes change immediately and noticeably. Especially clearly and expressively the changes taking place in the language are presented in its vocabulary, which can be clearly confirmed by the " Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language of the late XX century . Language Changes", published by Folio-press in 1998.

This remarkable dictionary was created by a group of lexicographers from the dictionary sector of the Institute for Linguistic Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Professor G. A. Sklyarevskaya. As its name implies. The dictionary should first of all reflect the reaction of the Russian language to the grandiose events that occurred in our state at the end of the XX century. A careful analysis of the Dictionary, its lexicon, and explanatory text segments associated with each heading unit leaves no doubt that the reviewed lexicographic work has mostly coped with this task. However, everything is in order.

It is known that the success of any limited dictionary, i.e. a dictionary that describes a particular fragment of the lexical system, largely depends on the quality of its vocabulary. In the dictionary under discussion, the dictionary consists of lexical units of four main groups. The first group is new words, which the authors propose to consider all lexical units, the first, actually philological.

page 117

The second group consists of words that are updated semantically, combinably, evaluatively, and so on, such as rent, bank, loyal, dissident, market, and so on. The third group includes words that have significantly changed their status and have moved in the last decade from deep passivity to the category of actual and common, for example, spirituality, liberal, repentance, reverend, etc. Finally, the fourth group consists of lexical units that reflect the peculiarities of the Soviet period in the life of our country, for example, all-Union, asterisk, peredovik, District Committee, treshnik, etc. In total, the Dictionary covers about 5,500 lexical units.

In addition to the dictionary that makes up the left part of the dictionary, the face of any lexicographic work is determined by the information saturation of its right part, which is formed by information about each word included in it. In the dictionary under consideration, this type of information primarily includes grammatical characteristics, interpretations, illustrative and exculpatory utterances, stable phrases that require explanation, phraseological units, and reference information (related lexical units; hyponyms and hyperonyms; encyclopedic information; alternative interpretations offered in other dictionaries). In addition, dictionary entries contain instructions that the corresponding heading unit should be capitalized; information about the pronunciation of abbreviations of the initial type and about cases of hard pronunciation of consonants before [e]; etymological information (for new borrowed words).

Evaluating the reviewed dictionary as a whole, one should immediately and definitely state that its creation represents one of the most notable events in the lively lexicographic life of modern Russia. The most important feature of the Dictionary is, in my opinion, its pronounced innovative character. This quality is evident in a number of very interesting author's solutions. These include, first of all, the choice of the lexicographic object itself. For the first time, these objects are words of the Russian language that are united by one common property, which can be characterized as follows: to be in motion leading to a change in status, to be characterized by a noticeably new status in the lexical system of the Russian language. It is this property and only it that allows you to combine into a single array such words as ATM, contract worker, monitoring, scoop, tusovka, fan, fax, etc., which have appeared before our eyes in the Russian language. Vampire, Maslenitsa, prime minister, reverend, prostitute, which have become very active in modern life,

page 118

Christmas holidays, etc., as well as those that go to the periphery of asterisk, executive committee, Marxism-Leninism, opportunist, raznaryadka, etc.

Undoubtedly, the idea of using "talking" graphic signs to indicate the status properties of a particular word should be recognized as happy. The first two of these signs indicate that the corresponding word is either recorded for the first time in the philological dictionary, or its first fixation refers to the period that is reflected in this dictionary. The third sign - an upwardly pointing arrow-indicates a noticeable activation of the word. An arrow pointing to the right indicates that the word serves as a designation for an object or phenomenon that has returned to our life. Finally, the left-pointing arrow seems to take the word out of the circle of current and current ones into the language bins, where its fate is either to wait in the wings to return in power and glory, or to quietly rot away, as thousands of other words that have served their time have rotted away before it. These five characters allowed the authors to reflect the dynamics of changes taking place in the lexical system of the modern Russian language and thereby significantly expand the expressive capabilities of traditional Gutenberg lexicography.

The creation and use as a base of a special electronic card file with a length of two million word uses gave the authors the opportunity to include in the dictionary and explain almost all new words belonging to the so-called iconic ones, i.e. those whose appearance "is due to the peculiarities of today's socio-political, economic and spiritual existence of the Russian ethnos" (A. V. Bonifield).

Among the advantages of the Dictionary is an unprecedented multi-faceted characterization of heading units. The idea of a comprehensive, all-encompassing description of them, first put forward and developed in detail in educational lexicography, was finally able to find an embodiment (albeit partial, inconsistent) in a non-educational, completely linguocentric dictionary. This was made possible thanks to a small dictionary of the Dictionary by the standards of non-academic lexicography.

If the advantages of the Dictionary, as you can easily see, are determined primarily by the originality of the lexicographic idea underlying it and the innovative nature of the dictionary article layout, then its main disadvantages are due to the obvious disregard for such traditions of Russian academic lexicography as thoroughness and consistency in working out all aspects of title words indicated in the introductory article; increased sensitivity to semantics; unconditional consistency the introduction article and the dictionary text, as well as different areas of the dictionary article; obvious distrust, and sometimes a certain disgust towards low-level texts as a source of illustrative, confirmatory and exculpatory citations; transparency and lapidary nature of the explanatory article, and some others.

page 119

Of course, it would be possible to keep silent about the shortcomings of the dictionary under discussion, but then the reader would not believe the review at all, since dictionaries are not quite perfect. Therefore, about the disadvantages. They are not of a fundamental nature, but, unfortunately, there are many of them.

The main imperfection of the dictionary under discussion is, as it seems to me, some general haste, lack of thought, and the preliminary nature of many of the conclusions, formulations, and assessments proposed in it. It seems that the authors were in a hurry, and this did not slow down to affect the quality of the Dictionary: after all, haste and serious lexicography are "incompatible" things. It is precisely inappropriate haste that can explain the controversy of certain fragments of the dictionary, when along with new words that really entered the Russian language, such failed applicants for the status of a new word as collectivization, byveviki, dumping, deficient, stagnant, snepper, corrupt, private / private, aids specialist, etc. also got into the dictionary.

It seems to me that many assessments of the status properties of heading units are not convincing enough for the same reason, for example, the statement about the actualization of such words as agrarian, armored personnel carrier, salary, quality, propaganda, rendezvous, dekulakization, chekist, etc. or about the return to the asset of the words verdict, high society, obedience, etc. Certain claims can also be made to the interpretation of the semantics of header units. First of all, we are talking about the quality of interpretations, among which there are insufficient, overly biased, and simply incorrect ones. The insufficiency of interpretation is easily established by comparing it with the illustrative text segments given here. So, if the gallery is, as the interpretation indicates, "a specially equipped room...", then how can you cooperate with it or how can it buy something (this is stated in the quotes)?; if the patriarchate is a "management system", then can you transfer 150 icons to it?

Among the overly biased ones, I refer to interpretations in which, instead of a calm and reasonable description of semantics, some pathetic screams are offered, which should probably condemn the "cursed Soviet past"again and again. This is how, for example, the remarkable absurdity of the interpretation of the word prosperity looks like: "In Soviet times: material and spiritual prosperity of the people as the highest program goal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Soviet government and the state "(emphasis added). - V. M.). An example of misinterpretation is a text segment that corresponds in the Dictionary to the lexical unit listening (1) - "A method of teaching a language in which texts of the native language or a foreign language are perceived and retold by ear." In fact, listening in the methodology of teaching foreign languages

page 120

it is called one of the types of speech activity (along with reading, speaking, and writing). The authors make a double mistake in interpreting the word blessed (1,2). First of all, there seems to be no reason to speak of homonymy here. The word blessed, if we consider only the actual Christian fragment of its semantics, is used in two meanings: first, as a synonym for the word fool, and secondly, as a permanent epithet associated with the names of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and St. John the Baptist. Hieronymus of Stridon.

Some etymological references can lead the user to some confusion. So, if the word password indicates that it comes from the English word password, this clearly needs a comment. The word basic in the value. "programming language" comes, according to the authors, from the English word basic "basic, basic", whereas in reality its English correlate is an abbreviation of the initial type BASIC, i.e. Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Also, it remains unclear why, contrary to the indication in ? 53 Introductions for many new loan words, there are no etymological references, for example, bachelor's degree (you could specify < engl. baccalaureate), business class (you could use < english business class), and so on.

The grammatical characteristics of many headline words are clearly flawed. For example, bio-field - plural forms are not specified; pick-past tense forms are not specified, etc.

An unpleasant impression is made by the inconsistency between the instructions contained in the Introduction and the text of dictionary entries. For example, if the word week is interpreted using the synonym week and does not have a stylistic mark, then, according to paragraph 31 of the Introduction, there should be an equal sign between them, which, however, does not exist; if the word tramp, accompanied by the mark Razg., is interpreted using the synonym tramp, then between them, in accordance with the same paragraph, the equal sign should not be, but it is, however, worth it. On page 6, among other things, the presence of the word razdray in the dictionary is indicated, which is not true. A similar inconsistency is observed between different zones of the same dictionary entry, as well as between different articles. For example, the word Internet has several litters, and in illustrative phrases and sentences it is used both in the genitive case (formed the basis of the Internet), and in the dative case (climb on the Internet), and in the prepositional case (created servers on the Internet). Another example. In the article with the title word Most Holy, we read [N uppercase], and in the article canon we see the phrase K. according to the Most Holy Theotokos, where the specified word is written with a lowercase letter (by the way, the preposition "po" in the given phrase should not be).

page 121

The authors ' decision to use the diacritic mark (akut) instead of the usual one(gravis) to indicate a side stress seems clearly unsuccessful (false-orienting), for example, to destabilize and under.

The dictionary, I think, would benefit if the authors considered it possible to notify users in some way that a particular word in question has other meanings that are not reflected in this lexicographic work. The dictionary would undoubtedly benefit if the authors were more strict and meaningful in their selection of citations, since now this area of dictionary entries is clearly overloaded with completely empty, linguistically uninteresting and not containing any additional or simply useful information extracts from newspapers and magazines. Moreover, among these extracts, there are also simply illiterate text segments. Take for example the article power. Here is the interpretation of the heading unit: "In Catholicism and Orthodoxy-the remains of the bodies of saints, many of which remain incorruptible and serve as objects of worship" (by the way, why "in Catholicism and Orthodoxy", and not "in Orthodoxy and Catholicism", which seems more appropriate in the dictionary of the Russian language?). In the citation area of the article, the following sentence is given: A lot of noise was made in Germany by the reburial of the relics of two Prussian kings - Friedrich II and his father Friedrich Wilhelm I EP, 1991, 35. Allow me, but the Hohenzollerns of Prussia were Protestants, and therefore, in relation to the persons named in the sentence, we can only talk about the remains, and not about the relics.

And finally, about the introductory article, which, I think, could be both more informative, and more thoughtful in terms of composition, and more intelligible in language design, and less jargonized. Indeed, how should the user pronounce and understand the verb "mark", which is obsessively repeated in the Introduction and, admittedly, not at all endearing to the ear, if the corresponding lexico-semantic variant is not noted in this verb in any of the explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language? From the point of view of linguistic taste, one should treat the following passages from the article under consideration: Compound words are given through the mark of the abbreviation and the disclosure of the abbreviation (p. 18); Razg. (colloquial) is the antipode (?!) of the Book mark (p. 21); When the noun is shown (...) gender indication (p. 22) : In compound nouns (...) the inflection is shown (p. 23); The noun is developed in the singular (p. 23); If the word denotes a certain aggregate, in this case the development is given in the plural (p. 23); The singular forms are given in their alphabetical place (p. 23). 23); The following is an interpretation on the perfect view and illustrations on the perfect and imperfect (p. 24).;

page 122

Two-specific verbs are interpreted through a specific pair (p. 24); Homonyms are developed with a digital index (p. 25); The dictionary entry also contains references to the normative spelling of a capital letter (p. 26), etc. The insufficiently high quality of the article under discussion is all the more disappointing because in Russian academic lexicography, assurances of loyalty to the traditions of which are repeated in many languages. Introduction as a spell, the genre of the introductory and instructional section is very well developed.

Concluding my perhaps unnecessarily grumpy review, I want to say that the imperfections mentioned in it seem significant only in the limited space of its text. When we pick up the object itself, a beautifully published seven-hundred-page folio, they are immediately reduced to barely discernible detail. This is understandable. Created under the guidance of G. N. Sklyarevskaya, the dictionary is a fundamental lexicographic work of great value both linguistically and historically and culturally.

Linguistically, i.e., from the point of view of language description, the significance of a Dictionary is determined by the fact that it "captures", makes known and comprehensively examines that part of the Russian vocabulary that embodies the so-called language dynamics with unprecedented completeness and expressiveness. Of particular interest to today's users is the new vocabulary reflected in the Dictionary, as well as the vocabulary that is experiencing a rebirth before our eyes. In this respect, the Dictionary very successfully complements both academic dictionaries and such popular lexicographic works of medium volume as the Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by S. I. Ozhegov and N. Yu.Shvedova. As for the vocabulary considered in the Dictionary that is going out of everyday use, i.e. words that reflect the realities of Soviet life, this is the object of attention primarily for tomorrow's users; interest in the vocabulary of the Soviet era will steadily increase over time, which is quite understandable.

In historical and cultural terms, the reviewed dictionary is of great value as a monument that captures the most expressive features and grimaces of one of the most significant periods in the history of Russia.

Finally, an explanatory dictionary of the Russian language of the XX century. Language changes are an undoubted contribution to the theory and practice of vocabulary. Its creation marks a certain genre-typological breakthrough, and this happens infrequently and should be considered as a milestone in the development of Russian lexicography.

Permanent link to this publication: