SEMANTICS OF INTRODUCTORY WORDS OF SUBJECTIVE ESTIMATION OF MEASURE AND DEGREE
The article deals with the issue of the functioning and semantics of the introductory words of subjective estimation of measure and degree ( по меньшей мере (at any rate), по крайней мере (at least), в той или иной степени (in a varying degree), в значительной степени (to a large extent), самое большее (at most), самое меньшее (no less than), как минимум (at the minimum)). The topicality of the study is conditioned by the fact that this category is overlooked undeservedly in many linguists’ works. The author suggests a classification of these introductory words, and also evaluates the shades of meaning that they acquire in a particular context. The conclusions are made on the basis of the structural-semantic analysis of the material of the Russian National Corpus.