Past tense usage in Old Russian performative formulae. A case study into the development of a written language of distance

Dekker, Simeon (2022). Past tense usage in Old Russian performative formulae. A case study into the development of a written language of distance. In: Mendoza, Imke; Birzer, Sandra (eds.) Diachronic Slavonic Syntax: Traces of Latin, Greek and Church Slavonic. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs: Vol. 348 (pp. 179-198). De Gruyter

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Thanks to the corpus of Novgorod birchbark letters, which occupy an intermediate position on a continuum between orality and literacy, we can trace the development of a formal written language over a period of more than four centuries. Its emergence can partly be traced to (1) the adaptation of Church Slavonic norms to secular text types, and partly to (2) an adaptation of vernacular oral habits to the written medium.
The twofold origin of this development is presented by means of a case study, viz. the use of verbal tenses, especially the perfect and aorist, in performative formulae. In early texts, the use of the perfect in performative formulae is due to persisting patterns of oral formulation. In later texts, on the contrary, the aorist emerges, due to Church Slavonic influence and the development of a “language of distance”. A comparison is made between the birchbark letters and the parchment letters from Novgorod and Pskov. The use of the aorist in performative formulae is also attested in Ancient Greek and in Old Church Slavonic translations from Greek. Thus, the use of verbal tenses enlightens the path of development of the Russian written “language of distance”, through the lens of Greek and Church Slavonic (foreign) elements in interaction with oral (native) patterns of speech.

Item Type:

Book Section (Book Chapter)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of Slavic Languages and Literatures

UniBE Contributor:

Dekker, Simeon

Subjects:

400 Language > 490 Other languages
800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism > 890 Other literatures

ISBN:

9783110647068

Series:

Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs

Publisher:

De Gruyter

Language:

English

Submitter:

Simeon Dekker

Date Deposited:

07 Dec 2021 12:13

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:55

Uncontrolled Keywords:

performatives, birchbark letters, verbal tenses, literacy

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/161414

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/161414

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