LANGUAGE ANOMALIES OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE IN THE FOCUS OF LINGUISTIC THEORIESS

 The article discusses the nature of anomalous utterances and texts of the Russian avantgarde, as well as their role in the formulation of linguistic theories of the early twentieth century. It contains an analysis of some examples from language practices of avant-garde literature, which, due to their anomalous nature, pushed linguists to new interpretations of the nature of language. We formulate a definition of anomalous text. An anomalous text is the result of a linguistic experiment, either intentional or unintentional. The study analyzes examples of language anomalies in the poetry of R. Jakobson, I. Zdanevich, I. Terent’ev, V. Shershenevich in their projection on the linguistic concepts of I. Baudouin de Courtenay, L. Shcherba, R. Jakobson. Our conclusion is that the discussions by linguists of the 1920s–1930s of the role of correct and incorrect statements in the formation of linguistic theories coincided in time, and in essence, with artistic language experiments, revealing common conceptual moves between science and art. For the twentieth century, linguistic and literary experience has made such a long and intriguing path that the anomalies of the text can hardly be regarded as a disease of language, but rather as a productive way of linguistic creativity, neologization and self-reflexion.