COMPOUND NOMINAL PREDICATE IN THE OLD BELARUSIAN LANGUAGE: REPRESENTATION OF THE NOMINAL PART

Abstract

The article considers means of representation of the nominal part of the compound predicate in the Old Belarusian literary and written language and gives examples from written monuments of different genres dated the 14th – 18th centuries. It was revealed that the most common ways to express it are as follows: nouns in the nominative and instrumental cases, and sometimes in other oblique cases; short adjectives in the nominative case; full adjectives in the nominative and instrumental cases; adjectives in comparative and superlative degrees; short and full participles; adverbs and words of the category of state. Pronouns (possessive and relative) and numerals (quantitative and ordinal) are less common. The neuter short participles are used as part of a compound nominal predicate in mononuclear impersonal sentences. The choice of the nominative or instrumental case of a noun or an adjective being the nominal part of the predicate could depend on the location of the nominal part in the structure of the predicate, the origin of the written text, its genre affiliation, the grammatical systems of other Slavic languages, the traditional spelling and the desire to reflect the features of live speech in writing. These factors have caused the variability of the nominal part of the compound nominal predicate. The results of the research will contribute to the theoretical understanding of the dynamics, main trends and patterns of development of the syntactical system of the old Belarusian literary and written language. They will also be used in characterizing the language features of the monuments of different genres.