Basic Reporting Verbs as Markers of the Author’s Idiostlyle

Abstract

This article reveals the peculiarities of idiostyles referring to works by nineteenth-century classical Russian writers (F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov, and I. S. Turgenev). Based on intertext and inter-style statistical comparison, the author aims to reveal lexical compatibility and some individual particularities of using some frequent reporting verbs in literary texts belonging to the same period. The research is methodologically based on the ideographic approach to literary text analysis which takes into consideration internal correlations existing between lexical paradigmatics and syntagmatics. Lexical bigrams (pairs of words used in one phrase context) are taken as a unit of comparative lexicostatistical and contextological analysis. Word combinations of this type are used by the same writer in different texts, though they are not found in works by the other authors. The only obligatory element of a lexical bigram is a word which is often used by all the writers in question as it reveals the specific patterns of an author’s work with the same language material (such reporting verbs as сказать (‘say’), спросить (‘ask’), ответить (‘answer’), заметить (‘note’) are very representative for this purpose). So-called “idiostylistic markers” most frequently used to describe the moment of speech are identified for each writer in question. The author draws conclusions about the individual specificity of these stylistic patterns. Author-specific lexical compatibility shows that in the contexts of the verbs in question with lexical bigrams extracted from novels by L. N. Tolstoy, the use of the verb отвечать (‘answer’) prevails and involves an expression of emotions. The verb замечать (‘note’) which is frequently used in novels by F. M. Dostoevsky, reveals psychological perceptional particularities of speech of the other. The author argues that the use of the verb говорить (‘say’) for introducing direct speech is typical of А. P. Chekhov’s idiostyle where it is syntactically combined with adverbial participles denoting various nonspeech actions drawing the reader’s attention to a particular detail. The verb промолвить (‘utter’) is specific for I. S. Turgenev’s idiostyle and reveals implicit but semantically important correlations existing between the concepts of speech, thought, and motion.