Semantics and pragmatics of the verb forms in Alexander Pushkin's prose

The article discusses the peculiarities of the usage of various verb forms in Alexander Pushkin’s prose in the context of the functional styles system formation in the Russian literary language in the 1820s and the 1830s. Such verb forms as finite verbs, participles and gerunds are the objects of the analysis. The study was carried out from the perspective of historical stylistics. The necessity to select language constructions for the creation of non-fictional texts resulted from the emergence of new spheres of activity, as well as from the development of different branches of science, including humanities. Pushkin’s principles of text construction via selecting language units corresponding to the function of the text were implemented in his works. The usage of semantic potential of the verb forms for transmitting the maximum accuracy of necessary meaning in prosaic texts of different genres is demonstrated by the example of his fictional prose and his research work “Pugachev’s History”. The study showed that active and passive participles, gerunds and the verb forms in indefinite-personal sentences in a non-fictional text create remoteness and objectivity, which are typical for the scholarly prose. The usage of finite verbs and gerunds in fictional prose produces a dynamic picture influencing the reader. All these facts are the steps for selecting language units to achieve a pragmatic goal of creating texts of different genres according to the society’s needs.