Colloquial speech in the novel «The Nurse from Moscow» by I. S. Shmelev: stylometrical analysis of corpus data

This paper presents the results of the stylometrical studies of the stylization
of Russian folk speech of the middle of XIX – beginning of XX centuries in I. Shmelyov’s novel «Nȃnȃ iz Moskvy». The analysis of lexical and stilisctic means was made in the context of general corpus stylistic research of the work on the base of concordances of edition 1936. Colloquial, obsolete words and loanwords of the novel as well as dialecticisms, idioms and proverbs are characterized in the article. Colloquialisms and colloquial grammatical forms are the most often used in the novel as the meanings of expressivity and appraisal. The narrator’s monologue, as if a real nurse’s speech, is full of idioms, proverbs and sayings. Phonostilistic means give the effect of spontaneity and authenticity of nurse’s speech transforming the graphic and sonic aspect of colloquial and all-russian words.