Diminutives in L. N. Tolstoy’s story "Childhood" in the context of language dynamics: a digital analysis of the authorial innovations

The study aims to determine the role of diminutives in Leo Tolstoy’s novel "Childhood" in the formation of the writer’s individual style and their influence on the lexical composition of the Russian literary language of the later periods. The work comprehensively analyses the diminutives in L. N. Tolstoy’s autobiographical "Childhood" as an important element in the writer’s individual style development and reflection of innovative processes in the Russian literary language of the mid-19th century. The research was conducted employing digital humanitaristics (humanities) methods, including computer processing of language data. To establish the facts of the first use, textual materials from the Russian National Corpus, the differential glossary of the "Dictionary of the Russian Language of the 19th Century", and the "Sociolit" digital platform were utilised. This approach enabled a more accurate and objective analysis of the neologistic processes conditioned by Tolstoy’s individual style formation. Based on the digital comparison of the "Childhood" lexemes with the units obtained from the corpus of V. I. Dal’s "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language", 143 unique lexical units were identified. The lexemes represent potential neology for the language usage of the mid-19th century. 14 out of these are diminutives, 6 of which are hapax legomena. Four of the identified diminutives are adjectival lexemes, three of which represent colour vocabulary, namely belokuren’kii (English fair-haired), rozoven’kii (English pinkish), and chernomazhen’kii (English dark-complexioned). However, according to the corpus analysis data, the adjectival diminutives are not the writer’s neologisms. They had already been in use in the literary language by the 1850s. The diminutive adjectives create an emotional tone, capture the child protagonist’s fleeting impressions, convey the psychological nature of the child’s perception, and help create an intimate family atmosphere. The adjectival diminutives become the lexical markers of the "happy time" of childhood which Tolstoy calls "irretrievable". Ten lexemes are nouns, which confirms the prevalence of substantival diminutiveness in the Russian language. Most of these lexemes, according to digital lexical corpora, are genuine neologisms of Tolstoy’s text (pantalonchiki (English pantalettes), khalatets (English little robe), indyushechka (English little turkey), kreslitse (English little armchair), and others). The study shows that in the first novel of Tolstoy’s autobiographical trilogy, diminutives play an important role in the formation of the unique artistic method of the "dialectics of the soul". They become one of the tools for depicting the child’s inner world, helping to convey his psychoemotional state. Tolstoy’s neologisms created according to diminutive word-formation patterns enriched the literary language of the 19th century, opening up new possibilities for expressing emotional evaluation and conveying expressiveness. The research confirms the capability of Tolstoy’s artistic style to create new words and expressions; the writer introduced new lexical units into use already in his first major work.

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