Current trends in the semantics and functions of foreignlanguage prefixes in the Russian language in the early 21st century

The article studies active processes occurring at the word-formation level of the language; it analyzes the borrowed prefixes frequently used in recent decades within the modern media space, namely: super-, hyper-, mega-, ultra- with the intensifying meaning, anti-, counter- with the meaning of opposition and quasi-, pseudo- with the meaning of falsity (fake). Based on examples from the National Corpus of the Russian Language, the article describes new trends in the development of semantics and grammatical properties of these prefixes, highlighting the autonomous nature of prefixes and their ability to be used as different parts of speech – as an adjective (both in postposition as a predicate and as a detached attribute), as a noun (declinable and indeclinable), including proper names (names of various stores, companies, etc.), as adverbs, interjections and, syncretically, combining the features of several parts of speech. Apart from that, we focus on their different graphic design: quotation marks, brackets, a hanging hyphen, an ellipsis; in addition, the analyzed prefixes perform accentuating functions and the functions of attracting and holding the addressee’s attention; they set a certain system of intra-textual connections and the reader’s orientation in the text space.