ORTHOEPY UNDER THE SCRUTINY OF CORPUS LINGUISTICS: DYNAMICS OF VARIATION AND DYNAMICS OF ATT ITUDES

We discuss the status of orthoepy as a linguistic discipline; its scope and limitations; the nature of orthoepic prescriptions and the evolution of dictionary marks in its connection to the evolution of the stress and grammar of standard Russian. We consider the use of Russian National Corpus as an instrument of prediction of further orthoepic changes and envisaging prescriptions resulting from this change.

1. Prescription can not apply to contextual modifications of phonemes ([cм’]ех/[c’м’] ех), because they are not perceived by a “lay speaker”, are not subject to his or her conscious choice and can not lead to communicative failures.

2. On the other hand, prescription may apply to variants that are different in ‘sound types’ (звукотип, e.g. ж[а]ле́ть/ж[ы]ле́ть, [ceйф]/[c’eйф], ти́[xъй]/ти́[x’и́й], [ч]то/ [ш]то, е́[жж]у/е́[ж’ж’]y); these variants may be suggested to represent newer vs. older norms.

3. Stress variants are the most dynamic domain of orthoepy. Special focus is on the change in verbal stress as reflected in the difference between the prescribed vs. real usage and in the chronology of dictionary marks (дружи́т→дру́жит, родился́→роди́лся etc.).

4. The use of the data of Russian National Corpus and, more specifically, comparative analysis of the main corpus and the corpus of newspapers is an important method of analysis of grammatical variation. We consider the competition between such forms as поезжай/езжай, одеть/надеть, тычу/тыкаю, мучу/мучаю, их/ихний and provide charts showing positive dynamics of the more recent variants.

In conclusion, we stress the difference in the nature of orthographic and orthoepic marks in the dictionaries. Orthographic marks may be prescriptive and prohibitive. Orthoepic marks may only, in most cases, have a status of recommendations; they can not (be regarded as means to) block language change.