IDIOLECT OF THE WRITER: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF LEXICOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION (from the experience of working on Dostoevsky’s Dictionary)


2016. № 1 (7), 476-486

Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract:

This article contains the evaluation of the structure of the entry in Idioglossary Dostoevsky in terms of a) the ability to extract from it a variety of information about the words used by Dostoevsky, and b) the problems that are faced by the originator in the process of the writing of such entry. It is shown that using the actual body of the entry you can get such details about the word as statistical, temporal, genre style, lexical and grammatical, phraseological, onomastics and interpretive information. Separately there`s a description of opportunities to get more information about the words. It is given in a special, important section of the entry — Comments. This part of the entry reflects a set of parameters of speech such as aphoristic potential, subordination and coordination constructions, pun, symbolic and metaphoric application, associative connections, family of words, a total of 16 zones. In the conclusion of the article there is a mention of some of practical difficulties encountered by the drafters of the entries, among them the difficulty of specification and formulation of values, the selection of contexts, describing the complexity of very frequently used words and some others.