THE SEMANTIC AUREOLE OF PUNCTUATION MARKS OF AN ADDRESS AND A GREETING IN CORRESPONDENCE

The article deals with punctuation in one of the most problematic areas of modern writing, in the beginning, consisting of an address and a greeting. The research is based on Russian National Corpus data. The author comes to the conclusion that the modern norm prohibiting the setting of a point in this position was not strict in the XVIII–XX centuries, but in the XXI century. gave way to the trend of point preference after the first welcome phrase of the letter. Using the concept of "semantic punctuation mark", the author defines the "semantic aureole" of comma, dot and exclamation mark. A conglomerate of associations forming an aureole is formed thanks to the semantic and emotional components that "semantize" the sign due to the message contained in the letter and the situation of writing. The author concludes that it is the dot and the exclamation mark that highlight the address and greeting as the minimum communicative unit that conveys the addressee's emotions and his attitude to the message reported in the correspondence. Research has found the semantic ambivalence of these punctuation marks. The dot, on the one hand, becomes a marker of both equal, business, friendly or kinship relations, and the dialogue between the higher and the lower, on the other hand, the dot marks the negative emotions of the sender of the letter, his indignation, anxiety, depression, and is also perceived as a sign of rudeness and insincerity of the addressant. The exclamation mark behaves like a marker of respectful attitude towards the addressee, a wide range of positive emotions of the addressant, and at the same time is perceived as a cry, demand, manipulation.