“ALMOST ABSOLUTELY” AND “ALMOST COMPLETELY” AS DOSTOEVSKY’S IDIOSTYLE MARKERS

The article, using the materials of the fi fth volume of Dostoevsky’s Idioglossary, which is currently being prepared for publication, argues for some features of the lexeme almost functioning in the texts of Fyodor M. Dostoevsky. The fact that almost in the texts of diff erent genres can perform the attraction function, i. e. the function of sensory or psychological infl uence on the reader, gets reasons. The linguistic indicators of the word almost, which primarily include the features of hypotaxis, its subordinating relations, the uniqueness of many collocations found only or mostly in Dostoevsky texts — almost absolutely new, almost absolutely happy, almost educated, almost imperial intellect and so on show the idioglossa status of this word. Besides, the analysis of subordinate relations of the word almost allows to identify the borders, the limits, which are not absolute for Dostoevsky, kind of the space of possible worlds created by the  writer — space-time limit, the limit of randomness and ambiguity, limitation of some positive quality, boundaries of the changed state, etc. Thus, the word almost along with the words suddenly, even, as it were and so forth serves for Dostoevsky as one of the main ways to create ambiguity.