Derivational pair: theory and practice of lexicography

Abstract

The article is devoted to such a seemingly well-known in the theory of word formation unit as a derivational pair. The construction of various fragments of family of words is based on different combinations of related units (wordbuilding chains, word-building paradigms), the most important element of which is a derivational pair. In the light of the peculiarities of derivational lexicography, the following question appears to be relevant: how different is the semantic content of derivational pairs in certain subsystems of the Russian language (literary language / dialects)? Derivational pairs can have different semantic content because of the differing lexical meanings of the base and the derivative. However, a derivational pair is obviously the result of modelling in which the word-building semantics proper is taken into account. If lexical meanings of the base and the derivative are taken into account in each particular case, then it is necessary to speak about the existence of some quantity of derivational pairs. The author draws attention to the necessity of examining the three following groups of units: 1) derivational pairs as combinations of words in the system of the literary language; 2) dialectal derivational pairs unknown in the literary language; 3) derivational pairs of synthesized type, when the combination of a dialectal word and a literary word is possible. In the latter case, the derived words often take on the role of «fillers» of word-building and semantic lacunas in dialects.