PROBLEMS OF LEXICOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF VERBS WITH THE PREFIXES POD- AND PRI- IN THE EXPLANATORY DICTIONARY OF RUSSIAN EVERYDAY SPEECH

The paper deals with the problem of describing verbs with prefixes pod- and pri- in The Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Everyday Speech (EDRES). These verbs often convey the meaning of low-intensity of action (e.g. podvintit’, podrabotat’, podvypit’,podzapravit’sia, etc.) In the existing conventional dictionaries, descriptions of such verbs include a low-intensity component (e.g. ‘a little’, ‘in a small amount’) and/or a complementarity component (e.g. ‘additionally’). For example: podbrosit’ (add some more, while throwing; throw a little); podvintit’ (screw up additionally, tighter; or a little,slightly); podvypit’ (after drinking spirits, become a little drunk); priplatit’ (pay additionally, give in addition); etc.

However, these semantic components are not clearly manifest in all contexts. In everyday speech there are numerous occurrences of collocations of these verbs with high- intensity adverbs: horoshen’ko, kak sleduet (properly), osnovatel’no, polnost’ju (thoroughly), izriadno, ser’jozno (heavily), sovsem (completely), etc.: Teper' mne nuzhno horoshenechko podzagoret' (Now I need to get some suntan thoroughly; — taken from a blog); — Uspeem. Kak sleduet podzakusim. Vremja pozvoljaet (We’ll make it. We’ll grab a bite properly. We have enough time; — from a short story by B. Ekimov).

Contexts like these pose the question of how such “neutral” uses should be reflected in the EDRES dictionary entries and whether they should be considered distinct meanings. The paper examines several approaches to this problem.