A Pioneering Lexicographic Work: “New Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Synonyms” by Jurij Apresjan
A Pioneering Lexicographic Work: “New Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Synonyms” by Jurij Apresjan

Summary/Abstract: The paper describes an innovative lexicographic product published in Moscow in the late 1990s—Ju. Apresjan’s New Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Synonyms [NEDRS]. NEDRS is essentiallybased on Apresjan’s theory of systemic lexicography and integral linguistic description. His introductionto NEDRS proposes several new important linguistic notions, such as lexicographic type,lexicographic portrait (of a lexeme), the dominant of a synonym series, etc. The main characteristicof NEDRS is the wealth and precision of the linguistic information supplied: thus, it specifies thereferential and communicative status of the lexeme under consideration and its actants, the type ofthe speech act expressed, the capacity of constituting an independent utterance, etc.; in particular,it offers meticulous and exact analyses of semantic distinctions between synonyms. Such data werenot provided before in other dictionaries. At the same time, NEDRS is extremely reader-friendly.

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