Short form adjectives and participles as facultative objective predicatives in 18t century Russian

Abstract

Our study of 18th century texts indicates that the sue of SF adjectives and participles as FOPs had declined radically in comparison with the preceding century. On the other hand, they seem to have been more extensively used in the 18th century literary language than has been commonly supposed, cf.Сравнuме льно-uсморuческuŭ сuнмаксuс восмоч-нославянскuх языков: Члены пре∂лоисенuя in which L. A. Glinkina (1968, 115) holds that the SF was replaced by the LF in this function “already in the first half of the 18th century”. This might well be true of those varieties of the written language which were closest to the colloquial idiom, but in the high style prose of Russian classicism the SF was used up to the beginning of the 19th century. The choice of SF/LF seems to have been decided solely by stylistic criteria: the SF serving as a ‘style-marker’ of the conservative ‘high style’. In the ‘new style’ (of Karamzin and his followers) which established itself in the early 19th century the conservative ‘Slavonic’ SF had no place. It is characteristic that we have found no examples of the SF in Karamzin's writings. Henceforth the 18th centurytrichotomy: SF/LFA/LFI was replaced by the 19th centurydichotomy: LFA/LFI, which in the 20th century tends to be replaced byone single form: LFI (or alternative constructions).