THE USE OF «THE NAMING DICTIONARY OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE» IN STUDYING SYNONYMS

Abstract

Based on the material of "The Naming Dictionary of the Russian language", the article shows the result of comparing pairs of lexical items recognized in the traditional linguistics classic example of absolute synonyms: the word "behemoth" and " hippopotamus". Comparison of associative fields called tokens, whose parts are their naming fields, allows them to be considered absolute synonymous, but only roughly. While the associative field of the word-stimulus “behemoth” contains numerous reactions, characterizations, references to precedent texts, in the field of associative wordstimulus “hippopotamus” major part of the reaction is the association related to the large size of the animal. Comparison of the naming fields of the analyzed synonyms brings out their differences. According to Russian speakers, the words “behemoth” and “hippopotamus” have great naming potential, but it is the word “behemoth” that has achieved its naming implementation capacity. The word “hippopotamus” is hardly ever used as a name of an organization. As a results of the experiments, in addition to general naming potential (both words can be used for product names, food, shoe stores, pet stores, shops for children), lexical words “behemoth” and “hippopotamus” have differences in the composition of their naming fields. According to Russian speakers, the word “behemoth” is more suitable as the name of a grocery store, while the word “hippopotamus” can primarily be used as the name of a large-sized clothing shop. Thus, from the perspective of ordinary native speakers of Russian, lexical units "behemoth" and "hippopotamus" are not absolute synonyms.