Lexicographic portrait of the noun “age”

Abstract

Lexicography actively studies the integral description of words in order to understand not only the historical change in definition of the work, but also the functionality of certain words. This article describes the lexicographic portrait of the noun “age”, as well as examines the use of co-occurrence denoting the age of a person in the modern Russian language. Working with different types of dictionaries (historical, explanatory, word-forming, associative, and synonym), the author analyzes the changes in the semantics, development of word-formation and co-occurrence capacity of the linguistic unit based on the integral description. The noun “age” has numerous co-occurrence as it has appeared in the Russian language long ago, which also entailed changes in its definition. This author examines co-occurrence of the noun “age” used in dictionaries, as well as conducts their classification by biological, social, psychological, and mixed characteristics. Leaning on the Russian National Corpus, the article examines the use of the noun “age” in the modern Russian language, and its classification by the aforementioned characteristics. The conclusion is made on the frequency of the use of these characteristics.