Principles of historical purity and straightforward regularity in the conception of V. Mathesius and in determining norms of the Russian literary language of our days
Aim. The purpose of the article is to analyze the views of V. Mathesius and other members of the Prague Linguistic Circle based on the criteria for determining the literary language norm and evaluate these views, on the one hand, in the context of modern problems of language normalization, and on the other hand, from the standpoint of theoretical concepts of modern linguistics.Methodology. The article contains, firstly, a synthesis of various statements of Prague linguists about the criteria of the literary norm, and secondly, an attempt to apply the results of this synthesis when considering controversial issues of normalizing some phenomena of the Russian language of our days. When implementing this attempt, methods of functional and system analysis of the language are used.Results. The result of the study is the selection of four criteria for determining the literary norm and the definition of hierarchical relationships between them. These criteria are: (1) the historical purity of the language, (2) the regularity of models for constructing language units, (3) language practice, and, finally, (4) the correspondence of certain variants of a language unit to the communicative needs of native speakers at a given stage of language development. It is shown that, with a high degree of probability, the variants corresponding to the communicative needs of native speakers will eventually displace all other variants.Research implications. The theoretical significance of the study is that it contributes to the modern theory of language normalization. The practical significance of the work is related to the possibility of applying the results obtained in the preparation of normative dictionaries, reference books on the culture of speech and manuals on literary editing, as well as in the practice of school and university teaching of linguistic disciplines.