The Vocabulary of Azan Regional Official Documents (Databases of the 16-17th Centuries)

Abstract

Regional Russian literary texts are a valuable source for study of both appellative and onomastic vocabulary. Their material is important for a wide scope of humanitarian and social sciences including historical lexicology. At present the work of inventory, registry, study and description of regional sources data are among the most current interests in Russian historical lexicology and lexicography. The article in view presents the results of a multi-aspect vocabulary study on the basis of a corporate database of more than 880 official texts of the Kazan region dated XVI-XVII centuries (containing over 1 million word usages); it also outlines the strands of lexical research of the texts, shows the regional character of the material, describes the historical linguistic informative value of the documents, as well as the potentials of the findings in other researches of various kinds. The results confirm the value of the regional material for identifying common appellative lexical units including those that served as prototypes for onomastic lexical units. The body of the Kazan regional official texts allow to update current historical dictionaries, deepen the chronology of appellative words, and identify lexical units, meanings and variations that are not yet shown in Russian historical dictionaries.