The Parametrization of the Database of Common and Occasional Feminitives

Abstract

This study analyzes the experience of compiling a new type of dictionaries – electronic lexicographic databases on the basis of the corpus of common and occasional feminitives (feminine-gendered words) in the speech of modern native Russian language speakers. The theoretical basis of the work is the idea of the integral nature of the lexical meaning (G.N. Sklyarevskaya). The material was taken from the traditional explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, the Russian National Corpus, the Pragmatically Marked Vocabulary of the Russian Language database, the Explanatory Dictionary of Children’s Innovations by T.A. Gridina, and media materials. The database of common and occasional feminitives is an extension of the Pragmatically Marked Vocabulary of the Russian Language database (http://spml.ipmip.nspu.ru). The key principle of this database is the synthesis of the Russian lexicographic traditions (a clear zonal division of the dictionary entry) and the detailed fixation of such pragmatic zones of lexical meaning as emotional evaluation, ideological, gender, age, social status, national and cultural components. The analysis of the specifics of the lexicographic interpretation of a group of words with the meaning of femininity in the dynamic and semantic-pragmatic aspects makes it possible to clarify some parameters of this database in relation to the corresponding thematic fragment of the dictionary. Thus, it has been established that the thematic group of feminitives that designate the sphere of activity of a female person is characterized by active development both due to the appearance of new lexemes and neoderivation, and due to dynamic processes in the sphere of their semantics. Native speakers, when using feminitives more freely than when using words from other thematic groups, load them with a wide variety of emotive and evaluative meanings (from neutral or approving to sharply derogatory meanings), attribute polar rules for their application (from “must use” to “completely refuse”). Lexicographic studies have shown that traditional explanatory dictionaries also inconsistently reflect the names of female persons in general or individual components of their lexical meanings. The above said makes it necessary to create a special database of common and occasional feminitives, which can solve the problem of fixing the pragmatic zone of the lexical meaning of the word, serve as a model in the lexicographic consolidation of the words of other thematic groups with moving and polar connotations. This article argues that in relation to the thematic group of feminitives, indicating the field of activity of a female person, such parameters of lexicographic fixation should be used as the fact of fixation in traditional dictionaries, the presence of lexicalsemantic variants of the word, the denotative and connotative zone of the lexical meaning, the connotative markers of actualization of components and/or methods of their neutralization, the stylistic scope of the unit, the presence of derivational and other variants.