Focus Particle I in Russian

The paper is devoted to the description of the polysemical particle “i” in the Russian. It classifying the meanings of the particle: relying on the sample of examples with “i” extracted from the corpus and annotated, as well as on existing descriptions, paper distinguishes the main types of the particle uses which differ in terms of its semantics and positional properties. Based on the corpus study of a particle, the frequency of different interpretations is counted in different subcorpuses of the NCR. For each of the interpretations, the paper identifies the properties that distinguish it from other units of this type in Russian and in other languages. The work pays special attention to the contexts in which the particle does bot act as a part of idiomatic collocations. For some uses of the particle, the unified meaning is given, producing different interpretations based on the context; for some, arguments are given in favor of the fact that such meaning cannot be formulated. For some uses, their relationship in diachrony is discussed.