The article is dedicated to the description and research of spontaneous colloquial speech. The object of attention is specifically communicative items and their characteristics. The basic idea is mentioned in many sources: the real meaning of a word is possible to find only in context, as the meaning depends on the actual use of the word. The research has been done on corpus material (the Corpus of Spoken Russian Language, module «One Day of Speech»; also National Corpus of Russian). The following items have been analyzed: (ne govor’a o (ob / ne govor’a o tom chto (chtoby), tipa / tipa togo chto, (...) skazhem (...), shchas, vrode (po idee/v principe/kazalos’ by etc.) Х sed P). The results show several system processes such as grammaticalisation, pragmaticalisation, re- and desemantisation, and phonetic reduction. As a result of all these processes, some new items appear in speech. They are not included in any dictionaries or student books, but they are completely normal for any native speaker/listener and es