Aphoristic units recurrence in modern Russian language

Modern linguistics focuses on recurrence as a feature and category of various units of language and speech. In this regard, the contrastive analysis of recurrence and reproducibility on the material of set units is particularly relevant. The author attempts to differentiate recurrence and reproducibility at the phrase level. The aims of the work are to establish and describe the linguistically significant parameters of the aphoristic units’ recurrence. The material of the study is about 1000 recurrent aphoristic units in modern Russian language. The units are taken from phraseological and paremiological dictionaries and identified in the speech of native Russian speakers recorded in 2001-2018. The study determines the concept of phrase recurrence as regular phrase formation in typical contexts, not as their frequency as ready-made units in speech. The study identifies that recurrent aphoristic phrases do not have stable components, figurative meanings, neither on the whole nor of their components, and nominative semantics. Recurrent phrases do not refer to the so-called speech “standards” and “stereotypes” that function as “ready-made formulas” and their components have strong connection. Recurrent phrase has free components. Among different phrases with free components, recurrent phrases are close to set phrases in their structure and way of functioning. We can argue that the categorical difference between recurrent and set units is a criterion for determining the scope of phraseology as the part of the language system.