Reconstructed fragment of speech practice dated back to 19th century on the example of the language of Aleksandr S. Pushkin

Statement of the problem. The article is devoted to usual linguistic units of the 19th century reflected in the letters of A.S. Pushkin in the aspect of their inconsistency with modern standards. The study of “small diachronic shifts” that have occurred in the language for 100-200 years seems to be very relevant today, since the language of Pushkin’s time is already far enough away from us to delimit it from modern usage. This requires the accumulation and systematization of relevant linguistic facts. The purpose of the article is to characterize a number of pronunciation, grammatical and lexical units characteristic of the 19th century usus, in contrast to the modern one. Research material. The main material of the study was the letters of A.S. Pushkin dated back to 1830. The data of Pushkin’s Dictionary of Language and the National Corpus of the Russian Language were used as additional material. Research methods include diachronic, comparative, contextual and component analysis. Research results. The analysis of Pushkin’s epistolary texts prove the idea that the pronunciation and grammatical norms of the 19th century were characterized by a wider variability compared to the modern language. The fixation of the meanings of words relevant to the Pushkin era in modern dictionaries does not always reflect the actual practice of their use, since significant semantic changes could occur in these lexemes. Examples of verbal control can also indicate small semantic shifts in words, as indicated by a change in their lexical and grammatical compatibility.