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Vocatives in Russian and English Discourse
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DOI: 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-01-11
Abstract: In the Russian and English discourse, there is a set of nationally specific vocatives that form a system and
can be represented in a Russian-English and English-Russian ideographic dictionary of vocatives. Neither in the
Russian nor in the English lexicographic tradition does there exist an ideographic dictionary of vocatives, while its
creation seems relevant for cultural and linguistic reasons. The purpose of the study is to characterize the macro and
microstructure of a Russian-English and English-Russian ideographic dictionary of vocatives, to identify common
features and specific peculiarities of Russian and English vocatives included in the denotative-ideographic group of
education. The scope of this article covers the semantics of vocatives denoting a person according to his / her role in the
education process. The Russian-English and English-Russian ideographic dictionary of vocatives should contain
information about the syntactic nature and grammatical semantics of the vocatives. The dictionary should include
information about the fact if the vocatives can be used without any modifiers, whether they can be singular or plural and
can be combined with thou / you forms (in the English-Russian part of the dictionary), if the vocative singular form can
be used addressing a group of people (e.g. the vocative bachelor instead of bachelors). The dictionary should also
include information whether the vocatives can be used with additional vocative means (a vocative means is something
that can make a noun, which is usually not used as a vocative without attribute adjectives, a form of address).
Additional vocative means can include adjectives dear, beloved; the pronoun my; the use of suffixes, including
diminutives, the interjection hey, etc. The article presents the results of semantic and contextual research on vocatives
included in the denotative-ideographic group of education. The article discusses the national-cultural features of
vocatives in accordance with the specifics of speech etiquette and the interpretation of the communicative category of politeness in the Russian and English linguistic cultures. The results of the study can be applied while compiling
Russian and English ideographic dictionaries.
Key words: Russian language; English language; Russian lexicology; English lexicology; lexical semantics; Russian vocatives; English vocatives; lexicography; linguistic dictionaries; ideographic dictionaries; vocative means; dictionary entries.
For citation
Nesterenko, E. Yu. (2021). Vocatives in Russian and English Discourse. In Philological Class. 2021. Vol. 26 ⋅ №1. P. 144–152. DOI 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-01-11.