New Year's "Titanic"

What to hide, many of us feel like the musicians on the Titanic deck: the ship has already flown into the iceberg, in general, we are drowning-along with its violins and flutes, but for some reason it is terribly important that the orchestra plays all notes correctly, keep all the strokes and all the nuances. Of course, this metaphor, especially if you start developing it, is greatly lame, but it conveys my mood, at least, it conveys.

Therefore, I am very glad that by the end of the year the first issue (two volumes) of our “active dictionary of the Russian language” (under the general leadership of academician Yu. D. Apresyan) should go out of print. The first issue is A-g, that is, if you focus on other explanatory dictionaries, it is about one sixth of the whole dictionary. Well, articles for the second release have already been partially written, so in two to three years, I hope ...

Actually, this is a difficult matter-to draw up a dictionary. It is not for nothing that lexicographers are so fond of quoting the syllabic poems of Feofan Prokopovich:

If who is the hands of the tormented
Waiting, poor head, sadness and torment,
Did not lead him to the deed of the forge,
Neither send ore places to the hard work:
Let the vocabulary do - then one finish:
This only labor in itself has all the torment!

I must say that our dictionary is a long story with the backstory. In the 60s-the first half of the 70s in Moscow, a linguistic oasis miraculously arose. These were glorious times: the “meaning - text” model, the theory of lexical functions - it seemed that it was a little to adapt to everyone together, and the whole tongue (and all languages) would be described harmoniously and strictly. Which is at hand both to machine translation, and to artificial intelligence.

In the mid-60s, I. A. Kelchuk and A.K. Zholkovsky formulated their “system of semantic synthesis”, that is, the basis of the concept of sensible and combination lexicography, and immediately began to develop the first vocabulary articles of the words of the Russian language. Soon, Yu. D. Apresan joined them, and so the core of the team of the legendary TKS (“Intersective and Combinatorial Dictionary”). According to Melchuk’s estimates, about forty linguists were involved in the work on TKS for ten years or another - and which ones! But all attempts to publish TKS were unsuccessful.

When Melchuk was fired “for politics” and in 1977 he left, and soon left Zholkovsky, the question of the publication of the TKS in the USSR was closed (the dictionary was released only in 1984 in Vienna, which, of course, did not make him accessible to a wide circle of readers in Russia). For the remaining late -standards, they were difficult: they did not allow them to be printed, fired, smashed, interfered with working - but what to talk about it ...

Nevertheless, the ideas of the TKS are firmly rooted. Some of its principles were partially implemented in other dictionaries. In the mid-80s, the concept of systemic lexicography of Yu. D. Apresyan arose in the development of the provisions of the meaning-text and TKS, on the basis of which the prospectus of the “Integral Dictionary of the Russian Language” was created, published in 1991; At the same time, under the leadership of Yuri Derynikovich, the development of a series of active dictionaries began, at first the “new explanatory dictionary of the synonyms of the Russian language” (the end of the 90s-zero), and then the “active dictionary of the Russian language”. Which I am talking about.

A team from a dozen linguists led by Apresyan is currently working on it at the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Fortunately, during this time, thanks to modern technologies, the work of a lexicographer has changed a lot. We no longer spend months and years on digging examples from texts and sorting dusty cards. With the advent of electronic buildings and all kinds of textual search tools, this black part of the work is done in a few seconds and much better. But the very magic of our work is to think about the word and understand what it means - no one will do this for us and no one will take it away from us.

AS differs from TX with even more information about the word and the lower formalization of methasalism (since it is facing a wider circle of readers). How it is arranged and on what principles it is built - it would be long to tell. But I ask you to believe the word: there was still no dictionary that describes Russian words so in detail.

However, since one sixth is made, it means that five sixth should be done, that is, all this, as stated in the song from the film about the same Titanic, Will Go On and On. So we clean the mouthpiece of our clarinets, rub with rosin of the bow of our violins, put on binocular glasses, pull up the armored - and Happy New Year to us all!