In the speech practice of recent years, there is a significant amount of word usage that does not correspond to the canons of modern academic lexicography. Thus, the adjective unpleasant is almost always found in the meaning of "unpleasant" (and not "impartial, fair"); the noun persona-in the meaning of "person" (and not "materials about an outstanding person"); exaggerate-in the meaning of "discuss" (and not "exaggerate, inflate"), etc.

How to evaluate the noted phenomena: as violations of lexical norms, i.e. mistakes, or as facts of natural language dynamics? The final answer to this question will be given by time and the corresponding codification of the outlined changes by explanatory dictionaries of the modern literary language.

To reflect such phenomena, the Dictionary of Semantic Innovations is conceived as a concordance-type publication, the dictionary of which contains several hundred "problematic" language units in terms of speech culture. For each of them, an array of documented contexts is given that reveal modern speech usage, traditional lexicographic interpretation is given, and the reasons for the observed semantic changes are explained. In addition, if there are words derived from the title, the contexts with them are placed in the final part of each dictionary entry. Here's what one of the future dictionary blocks looks like.

MONSTER 1. Giant. 2. Corypheus.

1. His (Spielberg's. - E. G.) We were not satisfied with the best conditions offered by monster studios (AiF. 1999. N 8); STS TV channel took fourth place, passing only the national "monsters" of ORT, RTR and NTV! (AiF. 2001. N 18); The program "Emerald City" had to compete with the works of such monsters of television as "TV-6 Moscow" (Kirov evening. 1999. N 18);

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Today, three large conglomerates and three monsters are moving in our political space (AiF. 1999. N 45); And not so long ago, SONY also invaded the computer technology market, significantly squeezing out such monsters as IBM and MICROSOFT (Kirov Evening. 1997. N 40); This seemingly financial monster lost its license in just a few days (Kontakt. 1996. N 33); People ...with open arms met and in the concern Fiat, and in the independent even then from this industrial monster company Alia Romeo (Autorevue. 1999. N 2); This is what it means to have corporatized enterprises in the district, in which financial and industrial monsters suddenly began to show interest (Ogonyok. 1997. N 46); All of them, whatever one may say, are monsters of the Russian elite, full-fledged masters of the regions (Mosk. coms. 2000. N 24). 2. Our "monsters" - N. Mikhalkov, S. Belza, O. Tabakov (Komsomolskaya Pravda. 1999. 22 Jan.); ...such monsters have gathered. Rosestrady like Alla Pugacheva, Murat Nasyrov, Alena Apina, Oleg Gazmanov, Vlad Stashevsky and others (Novaya Gazeta. 1997. N 40); ... monster talk show Phil Donahue (AIF. 1999. N 10); ...the whales of domestic samizdat are involved-Sergey Guryev and Oleg Pshenichny, they are also - monsters of Rock Journalism (Apple Color. 1999. N 4).

Big explanatory Dictionary of the Russian language (St. Petersburg, 1998): MONSTER. 1. Knizhn. A monster, a freak. Scary monsters. Draw monsters. 2. Razg. About who (what) stands out, impresses with its unusual (usually ridiculous) appearance, ugliness. The machine is a monster . // About a person with some bad character traits, oddities in behavior, etc. To live among monsters.

The new use of the word monster is a consequence of the authors ' ignorance of its meaning and associations with the consonant noun mastodon, which in a figurative sense is used as a characteristic of someone (something)-something large, significant, but out-of-date, old-fashioned, obsolete. The latter is confirmed by the synonymous use of the nouns monster and mastodon, for example: Just listeners who know about these standards will not go to Leon-tiev's concerts, for them he will forever remain a monster of the Soviet stage ... (Our version. 1998. N 15); (Voice of Alsu. - E. G.), according to the mastodon of our stage Lev Leshchenko, something reminded him of the voice of Anna German (All. 1999. N 16); There were, of course, mastodons like Marquez or Fowles, the same Astafiev... (Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 1999. N 21); " Nevertheless, the rights to "Tales" were sold to another film monster - "Universal Pictures "" (All. 1998. N 25).

Kirov

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