The Word Samyj in the Light of Active Processes of Russian Speech (Grammaticalization, Idiomatization and Pragmaticalization)

The article is devoted to comparison of the traditional lexicographic description of the word samyj and its actual use, in the light of active processes of Russian  taneous speech. Change is the driving force of language. Linguistic transformations are directly related to a number of active processes in modern speech, which often contribute to a change in the categorial status of the original unit. In this regard, processes such as grammaticalization, idiomatization and pragmaticalization are of particular interest. All of them operate synchronously and simultaneously and are obviously related to each other, and by paying close attention to the results of these processes we can see the diversity of functional possibilities of any unit. The source material for the present study was various dictionaries and the corpus of everyday Russian speech “One Speech Day”. As a result of all the active processes, the pronoun samyj becomes either a formative particle in the superlative form (samyj bystryj, samaya vysokaya), or an intensifi er in analytical constructions (do samoj poslednej minuty, vozle samogo metro), or a component of a phraseologyсal unit (samoe plevoe delo, samoe to), or a component of a fi xed expression with idiomatic potential (samoe modnoe, to zhe samoe, tem samym), or a pragmatic marker (eto samoe). Some lexical and grammatical characteristics of units created under the infl uence of active processes in modern speech are placed in peripheral zones of dictionary entries, while others are omitted in dictionaries altogether. At present, it is possible to set the task of creating a new academic descriptive dictionary that would take into account the cognitively necessary information
and represent the entire divers