Principles of normativity and historicism in the Russian academic lexicography: The great explanatory dictionary type re-examined
Authors:   Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vorontsov Roman I. , Priemysheva Marina N. ,   Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Puritskaya Elizaveta V. ,   Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
Published: September 2024

The article is dedicated to the problem of correlation between the two essential principles of explanatory lexicography in the conceptual design of the Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language (hereinafter the Dictionary): these are the principles of normativity and historicism. Within the scope of the Russian academic lexicography, the problem in question has not been well-developed in relation to an explanatory dictionary of the great type. In the 20th-21st centuries, the type of a fundamental multi-volume academic dictionary of the Russian language was embodied in three editions: today, the third one (in 35 volumes) is being prepared. The Dictionary proposes a comprehensive lexicographic evidence of the Russian literary vocabulary and, therefore, is often referred to as the biggest achievement of the Russian lexicography. For all its undeniable advantages, the Dictionary combines two contradictory principles: the principle of historicism (reflecting the Russian literary language “from Pushkin to our time”) and the principle of normativity (codifying the current standard language). To a great extent, the combination of these two principles has emerged occasionally, which was determined by the following factors: first, the lack of research in the dictionary typology, in the theory of standard language, in the problems of synchronic and diachronic lexicography, which was typical of the early 20th-century Russian linguistics; and, second, a very close relationship of the Dictionary with the previous imperfect lexicographic projects. The combination of the two principles results in two contradictions: the typological one, making it hard to constitute the exact dictionary type, and the methodological one, which does not contribute to a proper implementation of various lexicographic techniques and approaches. The typological contradiction is considered with respect to the definitions of basic notions, to their correlation in the concepts of academic dictionaries, and to the historical reasons that determined the emergence of the abovementioned lexicographic conflict in the late 1930s when the Dictionary workflow was launched. The methodological contradiction is due to the co-existence of the two basic principles in the current Dictionary (the third one). In a single entry, the description of modern semantic, stylistic, and grammatical features of the word as well as the specifics of its use in the contemporary language is often combined with the description of features that were typical of this word in the 19th-early 20th centuries. In the article, based on the description of obsolete vocabulary and interpretation of the word semantic structure, the authors study the lexicographic areas where the conflict of normativity and historicism leads to inconsistencies that may hardly be worked through. The statement and brief analysis of the problem is the first step toward the development of a non-contradictory concept of the following-now definitely electronic-Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.