The Part-of-Speech Status of Pravda (‘Truth’) Lexeme in the Russian Language of the 21st Century

Abstract

The modern stage of the Russian language development is characterized by the existence of a huge number of lexical units of "transitional" character. These phenomena demonstrate washing out of language subsystems' boarders. Meanwhile, they are (in the terminology of linguo-synergetic approach) "bifurcation points" for the whole language system. The present article focuses on the topic of determining the realization of the pravda ('truth') lexeme in the Russian language of the 21th century. As a result of the analysis of more than 450 cases of using this lexeme the author reveals its role as a part of speech in the language at the modern stage of development, reflection of the lexeme's meanings in the modern lexicographic literature and the transitional phenomena connected with the usage of the lexeme in various contexts. Lexical-semantic and morphological-syntactic classifications let establish the existence of the group of realization of the considered unit with the adverbial meaning which is proved by the synonymic relations of the pravda ('truth') lexeme with the lexemes verno ('truly'), deystvitelno ('really'), na samom dele ('actually') in various contexts and also by the stylistic paradigm – realno ('really'), chetko ('plainly'). This allows considering the studied lexical unit as a marker of linguo-creative activity of Russian-speaking persons of the 21th century.