Research on the tense-aspect system of the Old Russian literary language in its embryonic stage

2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 10610512
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 言語学・音声学
• Research Institution: KYOTO UNIVERSITY
• Principal Investigator: HATTORI Fumiaki Kyoto University/Faculty of Integrated/ Associate Human Studies Professor, 総合人間学部, 助教授 (80228494)
• Project Period (FY): 1998 – 2000
• Keywords: Old Russian / the Old Russian literary language / Old Church Slavonic / tense / aspect / history of Russian language / Russian historical grammar / the Arkhangel Gospel Book

Research Abstract

This study is aiming at describing the Old Russian literary language in its embryonic stage. Fundamentally the Old Russian literary language is the product of amalgamation of the Slavonic book language and everyday Eastern Slavonic. And traditionally, the early Old Russian past tenses are equated with those in Old Church Slavonic.
Such a traditional notion of the Old Russian past-tense system, however, is at odds with the actual distribution of past-tense forms found in the Old Russian texts. As A.I.Sobolevskij observed at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is notable that the Old Russian imperfect does not occur in legal texts. Also notable is that later Old Russian shows the gradual loss of all forms except the -1 form without overt auxiliary. Based on these facts, such scholars as B.A.Uspenskij and G.A.Khaburgaev propose an explanation that everyday Eastern Slavonic from the eleventh century onward had a tense system like that of modern Russian and that the aorist and imperfect are characteristic of the Slavonic book language.
With these things in mind I examined the Arkhangel Gospel Book in philological terms and found some interesting examples from the Arkhangel Gospel Book that might shed light on this controversial problem.