PLAYS “THUNDERSTORMˮ BY A.N. OSTROVSKY AND “BITTER FATE” BY A.F. PISEMSKY: SIMILAR MOMENTS OF GRAMMATICAL STYLISTICS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RUSSIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article continues the analysis of conditional conjunctions in the functional and stylistic aspect bookish/colloquial based on plays by A.N. Ostrovsky, whose language in the post-Pushkin period most clearly reflected the democratic trends in the development of the Russian literary language of the mid-19th century, and hypotactical conjunctions served as markers of the language progressive movement. In this regard, a well-known play by A.N. Ostrovsky “Thunderstorm”, winner of 1960 Uvarov Prize, is considered in comparison with the play “Bitter Fate” by A.F. Pisemsky, another award winner of that contest, a writer also associated with Kostroma region. The conclusion is as follows: although the “Thunderstorm” conveys the language of burghers and merchants, in contrast to the peasant language reflected in “Bitter fate”, however, bright signals of the colloquialism of conditional conjunctions against the background of the neutral features of bookishness are clearly distinguished in the style of the vocabulary and syntax of both works and there are many similarities: the use of colloquial or bookish conjunctions in a play mainly depends on the character’s social status and the communication situation. This conclusion comes from another play by A.F. Pisemsky, “Predators”, about the life of the elite bureaucracy, where the bookish conjunction если prevails. The authors of the article state the fact that in the subsequent development of the Russian literary language, the same trend in the development of function words remains.