The article examines the phenomenon of linguistic variation as a fundamental property of a living literary language and an object of various linguistic studies. The concept of linguistic variability is analyzed, and a distinction is made between variology (the study of the universal ability of language to vary) and variantology (the theory of lexical modifications of a word). Three types of variation are distinguished: formal, semantic and functional. The article pays special attention to the problem of distinguishing between variance and related linguistic phenomena – synonymy, linguistic differentiation, suppletion. It is argued that formal changes accompanied by stylistic or functional differences should be classified as linguistic differentiation. The main features of formal lexical variants are established: high reproducibility, identical structure, and the same meaning. It is noted that formal variability can be transformed into differentiation or synonymy.

variability, property, modern russian language

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