The epistolary legacy of Russian writers as a source for the study of neology in the second half of the 19th century

Abstract

The article analyzes the evolutionary processes in Russian language during the second half of the 19th century on the basis of letters written by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Leskov, and Chekhov. The signs are examined, which helps to determine the neological status of the lexemes. Special attention is paid to the metalanguage reflection as it provides information about a new word. Neologisms include both linguistic and speech units: Russian lexical neologisms, potential, occasional, borrowed vocabulary, and semantic derivatives. The content of the term potential words in relation to diachrony is specified: their main properties are the ability to eliminate lacunes in vocabulary, the nominative function, correspondence to linguistic word-formation types and the usual character of motivational connections. It is concluded that when determining the occasional status of a lexeme, it is necessary to take into account not only the violation of the laws of word formation, but the underivability of meaning from the wordformation model. An important feature of a number of occasionalisms from the period studied is the reflection of general linguistic trends in them. Borrowed vocabulary is considered in the aspect of phonetic, graphical, morphological, derivational and semantic adaptation in the Russian language. The article also analyzes various types of semantic derivational processes in Russian and foreign vocabulary: figurative, hyper-hyponymic, deviation, and connotative.