Lexicographical Description of “Kak By” (As Though)

The article is devoted to various lexical meanings of the construction kak by (as though) representing, in particular cases, a large class of units, which have undergone a process of pragmaticalization — pragmatic markers.
Pragmatic markers almost lose their original lexical and / or grammatical meaning and acquire pragmatic meaning, in other words, they perform only certain functions in discourse. The study is based on the material from colloquial speech. It confirms several dictionary definitions, as well as the list of functions of kak by (as though) expanded by hesitative and discursive uses, in addition to confirmation of the general polyfunctionality of the unit. For analyzing the meaning and functioning of kak by (as though) as a pragmatic marker, the corpus approach seemed to be a rather productive method of work, opening up previously unexplored features of semantic
potential of the lexical unit.
The source of linguistic and statistical data for the study was the “One Day of Speech” corpus, which most accurately reflects the changes in modern speech of the last decade. Based on the statistical and lexical-semantic analysis of the usage of kak by (as though) in the corpus, conclusions were drawn about the main functional capabilities of the discursive unit.