PUSHKIN’S LANGUAGE: LEXICOGRAPHIC STUDIES IV (TOVARISHCH, DRUG OR PRIYATEL?)

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t: This publication continues the series of papers devoted to Pushkin’s language. They describe the results of the analysis of the Lexicographic Corpus of Pushkin’s texts created in the Laboratory of General and Computer Lexicology and Lexicography at the Lomonosov Moscow State University’s Faculty of Philology. The article is devoted to the nouns characterizing interpersonal relations from the point of view of proximity of communication. It considers the basic composition, meaning and use of such words in Pushkin’s texts. They are compared with the modern language and with the description given in the Dictionary of the Academy of Russia and Dictionary of Pushkin’s Language. The analysis shows that Pushkin presents a group of units close to the modern one, but not fully coinciding with it. This group includes the now lost or rarely used words drugin’a, znakometz, znakomka, napersnik. The lexical meaning and use of words from this group also have some differences and peculiarities in comparison with the modern language, which should be taken into account when analyzing Pushkin’s texts. They are analyzed and described with the help of examples from these texts. A special attention is paid to the change of the words drug and priyatel. This problem is discussed on the example of Pushkin’s description of Onegin’s relations with Lensky and Onegin’s relations with the author. The analysis has shown that the types of close interpersonal communication are described in the lexical system of Pushkin’s language in more detail than they are now (due to the pair napersnik — napersnitsa), and the word tovarishch marks interpersonal relations to a much lesser extent than its modern counterpart. At the same time, the words znakomyj, drug, priyatel can be considered and used as rather reliable markers of these relations.