SEMANTIC CONDENSATES AS SPECIAL TYPES OF NOMINATIONS IN MODERN RUSSIAN LANGUAGE (stylistic status, functioning in usage, problems of dictionary description)

In modern Russian language one can observe the activation of such ways of word formation as univerbation and truncation, characteristic of colloquial speech and jargons. At present, words of this structure being semantic condensates are and massively produced in various subsystems of the language freely and in large quantities. The multiple increase in the activity of univerbs and truncations leads to changes in their stylistic connotations. In the usage of the last decades semantic condensates easily lose their narrowgroup attachment, bright stylistic reference, become full-fl edged units not only of colloquial speech, but also of mass-media discourse, and are widely used in various genres of publicistic texts. This is the peculiarity of their modern functioning. The article also discusses problems arising in lexicographic description of univerbs. One of them is the selection of units for including into a dictionary, since within a particular synchronic section of the language there always coexist words-condensates of diff erent degrees of commonality (and of varying degrees of prevalence among speakers); words, diff erent in the nature of relevance (having emerged in diff erent periods of language development). Another problem is related to the peculiarities of their semantics. Univerbs are unique units having a general indefi nite meaning, which is determined by the context and the situation; they often belong to the so-called “sponge” words (such as зелёнка, вышка,времянка, запрещёнка, нулёвка, etc.) and there is no generally accepted tradition of their dictionary fi xation and interpretation. This paper shows possible variants of their description based on the materials of the Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Everyday Speech (EDRES) and other modern dictionaries.