Semantic features are tagged in the historical texts according to the semantic classes of Modern Russian cognates. As semantics might be changed, and lexemes might not survive into Modern Russian, inaccuracies may occur; please use this annotation with caution.

The “Semantic features” field allows you to list the semantic and derivational features of the lexeme. You can either click “Choose” and select the features in the selection window or type them in yourself.

The selection window is opened by clicking on the “Choose” link. It contains a list of the semantic features, subdivided in several categories: class, taxonomy, mereology, evaluation, derivation, etc. Pointing the cursor to a feature brings up a tooltip with examples of words with this feature. Check the boxes next to those features that you wish to search for. If several features within a category are selected they are interpreted as using the “OR” operator. Features from different categories are interpreted as using the “AND” operator.

As a rule, semantic features have a hierarchy; for example:

By selecting the main category, you will find the words of all subcategories. To exclude a subcategory, uncheck the box next to it. Keep in mind that words tagged as belonging to a category may often not belong to a subcategory: for example, verbs belonging to the “physical impact” category include verbs not belonging to the subcategories “creation” and “destruction”, such as verbs of processing like вымыть. To search for words of the main category only, uncheck the boxes next to all subcategories.

It is possible to search for words belonging to a certain part of speech; for nouns, it is also possible to select one of of the semantic categories. The top part of the selection window contains tabs “Concrete nouns”, “Adjectives”, “Verbs”, &c. Clicking on the tab lets you choose the semantic features for the chosen part of speech.

At present semantic features for polysemantic words are not disambiguated; searching for “people+negative evaluation” yields all occurences of the word form собака, even where it refers to an animal). In certain cases the relevance of search results can be increased by selecting additional features; to exclude word such as дуб, мешок, &c. when searching for “people+negative evaluation” select “animacy” as a feature.

Parameters of semantic search

By default all the tagged meanings of a given word are searchable. For instance, the parameter human qualities selected in the "Semantic features" field will yield equally умный 'intelligent', верный 'faithful', коварный 'perfidious' where the parameter is present in the basic meaning, but also мягкий 'soft' or холодный 'cold' that apply to human beings only metaphorically.

To refine the scope of your search, select one or two parameters:

"sem" — only the first meaning given in dictionaries is searched (thus human qualities will yield words like 'intelligent', 'faithful' or 'perfidious', but not like 'soft' or 'cold').

"sem2" — the meanings other than the first ones are searched (thus only words like 'soft' or 'cold' will be found).

Parameters "sem" and "sem2" combined will search all the meanings of the word.