Traditions and innovations of markemology in the research of the language of russian novels by V. V. Nabokov

Abstract

The case study of the nine V. V. Nabokov’s novels written in Russian or translated into Russian by the author himself outlines one of the issues of the markemological studies (a field of quantitative linguistics dealing with massive bodies of text). More specifically, the paper presents an attempt to enrich the markeme concept by means of embedding into it not only the functional descriptor InTeM (the Index of Textual Markedness measuring the frequency of use of some words which is higher than that of the words of the same length) but also the attractive descriptor CoCon (the Coefficient of Constellation being the characteristic of markemes' ability to attract each other in the text). The new value is IMaW (the Integrated Markeme Weight) which is the sum of the values of the normalized InTeM and the normalized CoCon. The IFAAs parameter (the Index of Functional/Attractive Asymmetry), which is the difference between the normalized InTeM and the normalized CoCon, is also introduced. It should be noted that the positive values of the IFAAs show the predominance of functionality and the negative ones attest the dominance of attractiveness in a markeme. 122 markemes with significant functional/attractive asymmetries (positive or negative) were identified. Presented are 28 markemes with positive IFAAs and 51 markemes with negative IFAAs found in the same novel as well as markemes found in several novels representing two unequal sets: a large one (markemes homogeneous by sign) and a small one (markemes mixed by sign). In explaining the functional/attractive asymmetry, the authors find its causes not so much in the objective sphere of language as in the subjective sphere of artistic creation. Thus, the IMaW allows to take into account the essence of the markemes more fully and more extensive, while the IFAAs provides a means to discover the key features of the Nabokov’s language both as a whole and in each of his novels.