Russian Language Studies

In modern Russian-speaking internet discourse, affixation remains one of the most productive ways of word formation. Prefixation and suffixation are active in verbal derivation. A frequent verbal derivation is the formation of aspectual pairs. Cases of secondary imperfectivization are also of particular interest. The research attempts to systematize the main word-formation models of verbal derivation in internet discourse and identify current trends in verb formation. The research material was selected from various social media platforms without thematic restrictions. Research methods included content analysis, word-formation, structural-semantic, contextual scientific analysis, and online survey. The study proves that verbal neologisms not only preserve the traditional meanings of prefixes and suffixes established in academic works but also acquire new semantic components due to the specifics of the digital space. The analysis of derivational processes based on the classical system of verbal affix meanings reveals that internet communication adapts traditional morphological models to its current pragmatic tasks: self-expression, emotional emphasis, and phatic and communicative functions in the digital environment. The authors conclude that the rich derivational potential of verbs indicates users’ adaptation to virtual space and demonstrates the flexibility of Russian morphological system. This makes internet communication expressive, creative, and precise. Future research prospects include the analysis of verbs related to artificial intelligence (промптить ‘to prompt’, перегенерить ‘to regenerate’) or the study of age-related characteristics in the use of expressive affixes.

The relevance of the study is determined by the increasing medicalization in modern Russian society caused by the following factors: the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of “new ethics” and “new emotionality” concepts, and the growing popularity of psychotherapeutic services. The psychological terms entered everyday speech and communication, which gave rise to the phenomenon of психояз ‘therapy-speak’. The study is aimed at analyzing the linguistic nature of therapy-speak as a form of modern Russian language and speech medicalization. The research material includes data from the Russian National Corpus (subcorpus “Social Networks”), the Integrum electronic archive, and the lexicographic resource “New Words in Russian Vocabulary” (ILR RAS). The contexts of the analyzed units were extracted through word and collocation search combined with content analysis elements. The study employs traditional methods of semantic, component, contextual, lexicographic, and partially linguistic-cognitive analysis. The research shows the genesis and evolution of the term психояз ‘therapy-speak’ in the Russian language. The historical continuity of the phenomenon is revealed; the first wave of determinologized psychoanalytic lexis occurred in Russian in 1990s (комплекс ‘complex’, либидо ‘libido’, фрустрация ‘frustration’, нарциссизм ‘narcissism’, etc.). Therapy-speak is qualified as a traditional case of specialized lexis determinologization. The distinction between therapy-speak1 (incorrect use of psychological terms in everyday speech) and therapy-speak2 (metaphorical transfer of psychological terminology to phenomena unrelated to psychology) is introduced and substantiated for the first time. The author proves that “new ethics” is an important factor for psychological lexis actualization.

Technological development driven by digitalization, artificial intelligence, and state support for engineering education, determines the relevance of the studies of new words and meanings in lexis and phraseology of techno sphere. The aim of this study is to identify functional and pragmatic features of the semantics of words and phraseological units related to the sphere ‘Engineering and Technology’ and developing figurative meanings. The material for the study includes words with the component “техно- ‘techno’” in modern Russian language and the associative semantic field of units in the “Concept for Technological Development of Russia until 2030”. The productivity of this word-formation model creates pragmatically marked language units that are semantically unrelated to the technical terminological system and characterize a person’s emotional and evaluative attitude towards technology and equipment. The author used both traditional methods of word-building and semantic analysis of lexical units and corpus and automated data processing methods. Basing on the text “The Concept of Technological Development of Russia until 2030”, the author shows the connection between the associative semantic field visually represented with a word cloud and the semantic field, demonstrates similarities and differences of the two fields. The associative-semantic field “Technology and technologies” broadens including collocations “technological sovereignty” and “technological leadership”, units reflecting the modernity. Synonymic, antonymic, and paronymic relations within the structure of the associative-semantic field under study are also analyzed. The broad combinability of the lexical units технологический (technological) and технологии (technology), which destructs the original semantics of the words, is described. The set expressions with the adjective технологический (technological) are characterized in a dynamic aspect. The technosphere vocabulary closely interacts with the lexicon of various fields of knowledge, having the strongest ties with the digital field. The study makes some predictions about the future development of technosphere vocabulary, which integrates into various areas of humanities and social sciences. The prospects for the research could be a systemic dictionary description of the technosphere vocabulary.

The research studies the renewal of evaluative vocabulary with slangisms spreading in the digital environment and for the first time provides a systematic description of new frequent markers of positive evaluation (имба (from imbalanced ‘the best’, кульно (from cool), сасно ‘attractively’). The aim of the study is to identify the mechanisms of grammatical, semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic adoption and competition of new markers of positive evaluation among themselves and with the original круто ‘cool’. The study material included data from the Russian National Corpus, examples from spontaneous speech and online communication, media metric studies, and slang dictionary entries. The material was processed with corpus methods of content analysis and discourse and semantic analysis. The research established that the slang units undergo a full cycle of grammatical adaptation and are semantically differentiated by emotional (aesthetic, hedonistic, and psychological) and rational (utilitarian and teleological) evaluations; reaching the peak in frequency, they lose expressiveness and elevate their stylistic register to the colloquial norm. We show that the competition between slang markers of positive evaluation is functional and semantic and is not driven solely by speech fashion, shifts in cultural codes, and subcultural sources of borrowing. For the first time, slang units are examined systematically; their word-formation potential and specialization by types of evaluation are analyzed; a dynamic model of generation change in evaluative slang is proposed. The author concludes that the renewal of evaluative vocabulary is subject to compensatory dynamics: new borrowings fill the niches after the previous markers lose their expressiveness. The prospects for the study are in analyzing their perception by people of different ages and social groups and in comparison with the negative evaluative and ambivalent slangisms of the 2020s.

The main derivational models of neologisms with the suffix -oid in contemporary Russian language are considered. The relevance of the study lies in the need to identify the pragmasemantic features of these neoderivatives in comparison with previous stages of linguis tic development. The aim of the research is to systematize and describe the word-formation models of neologisms with the suffix -oid, to determine their main discursive domains, and to uncover the linguistic-cognitive mechanisms of the ongoing changes. The empirical basis of the study comprises data from the Russian National Corpus, neographic printed and digital sources and open-access Internet resources. The methodological framework is based on the synchronic-diachronic approach, which makes it possible to account for innovative phenomena in close connection with preceding stages of language evolution. The analysis demonstrates that the derivational model involving the suffix -oid has expanded beyond the domain of terminological word formation into the sphere of pragmatically marked derivation. The strictly denotative function of naming objects in the surrounding world is increasingly replaced by the designation of persons according to their belonging to a particular group. The motivating bases include proper names (anthroponyms, ethnonyms, various types of toponyms, etc.) as well as common nouns denoting well-established linguistic concepts or linguistic-cultural types. In modern speech, the formant -oid performs a classification function and serves as a marker of negative evaluation. The linguistic-cognitive basis of this pejorative shift is rooted in the prototypical semantics of similarity, which is interpreted by the nominator as a deviation from a perceived norm or standard. As a result, neologisms with the suffix -oid are a means of axiological stigmatization and are used within the framework of hate speech to articulate the opposition between “in-group” and “out-group.” The prospects for the study are seen in further monitoring of new words with the suffix -oid in various discursive practices and in determining the productivity of the word-formation model.