Language System Dynamics: A Corpus-Based Study of Synchronic Variation and Diachronic Changes in Various Texts

This article presents the findings of a project exploring variation parameters of the contemporary Russian language and its diachronic changes causing synchronic variations. The key objective of this research is to conduct a series of studies embracing a broad range of contemporary Russian linguistic issues in morphology, syntax, lexical semantics, poetry analysis, sign language, etc. These studies all take the same approach to language, viewing it as a dynamic, unstable, and evolving system. All studies use massive corpus-based texts, specifically various sub-corpora of the Russian National Corpus, and employ modern quantitative corpus-based analysis methods. 
The three key research areas: 
1) morphological and syntactical variation in written texts; 
2) morphological and syntactical variation in various types of oral discourse; 
3) formal characteristics of Russian poetry and unique features of poetic text structure. 
The project’s practical goal is to develop and improve the Russian National Corpus as a linguistic research tool, including updating, tagging, search capacity analysis, and integrity assessment.