Corpus analysis of ‘Russian songs’

Authors

• Artjoms Šeļa
• Mika Pylsy
• Riku Toivola

Keywords:

venäläiset laulut, korpustutkimus

Abstract

In this article, ‘Russian songs’ from the beginning of the 19th century – i.e. imitations or ‘stylisations’ of non-ritual lyric Russian folksongs – are analysed using the methods of big data research. A corpus of ‘Russian songs’ is compared to corpora consisting of both folk songs and literary texts. The poetics of ‘Russian songs’, surprisingly enough, do not resemble the folk songs they are supposed to be imitating, and comes more close to the literary norms of their time.