The newspaper “Babochka” (1829–1832) as a linguistic source

Abstract

The article deals with the newspaper “Babochka” as an important source for philological research, which objectively reflects the linguistic processes of its time. Translated articles selected from leading periodicals in Europe and America, creatively revised by the authors, included the Russian reader in the world media space. A differential approach is used in the article that focuses primarily on the dynamic elements of the lexical and semantic system. The newspaper presents the innovations of the early 19th century, including borrowings, foreign language inclusions, complex adjectives formed in Russian, and dialect words. As a result of the analysis of the source, the emergence of new meanings for words already in use was noted, the dating of a number of new lexemes was clarified, and contexts for their semantization were identified. The work concludes that the rare words and rare word usage recorded in the texts of the newspaper “Babochka” can be considered as valuable materials for historical lexicology.