Russian Church Slavonic Research Articles

PIOTR TOLSTOY AND SAVVA RAGUZINSKY AS TRANSLATORS OF THE PETRINE ERA: LANGUAGE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

The paper examines the linguistic features of the translations of historiographical works made by Piotr Tolstoy and Savva Ragusinsky from Italian in the first quarter of the 18th century. These are translations of Paul Ricaut’s treatise The History of the Modern State of the Ottoman Empire and Mavro Orbini’s book Il regno degli slavi. The similarity in the usage of certain lexemes and grammatical constructions (phasic verbs, constructions with the pronoun kotoryi and the repetition of the referent, the substantive infinitive) is analyzed. The presence of common linguistic features in the translations under consideration is primarily due to the fact that they are characteristic of the Russian Church Slavonic language of the Peter the Great era as a whole. The commonality of the constructions used by the two authors arises both because of the translated nature of the texts considered, and because of their similar status.The intensity of the use of certain constructions in the editions of two translations is also influenced by the direction of editorial change during the preparation of Russian texts for printing, which was carried out by different people at different times. The detected lingistic differences (grammatical calques, a specific indicator of evidentiality) relate to the level of local linguistic phenomena. The analysis involves the original works of Piotr Tolstoy and the translation of the Quran from French, printed in 1716 in St. Petersburg, which may also be associated with the name of Tolstoy. According to the parameters considered, the translations of Piotr Tolstoy turn out to be closer to the translation of Savva Raguzinsky than to his own writings.

ZAHARIJA ORFELIN E IL CANTINIERE SERBO

Orfelin's Iskusni podrumar (1783) is the first Serbian book about wine culture and techniques of beverages production and preservation. First great laic intellectual of Serbian 1700s, Orfelin first declared the necessity to write in the spoken language, in order to contribute to people cul- tural elevation; nevertheless, in his works, various linguistic elements (“Languages“ or “Styles“) are evidenced: Russian Church Slavonic, Slavonicised Literary Russian, Serbian vernacular. Due to the mixture of various elements in several of his works, he is often considered the creator of the so-called Slavenosrpski, a sort of hybrid language evaluated in different ways by scholars. Also in Podrumar, contrary to the indication on the frontispiece that it was written in Serbian, it proved to be mostly a mixed language, close to Russian Church Slavonic on the one hand and very close to vernacular, on the other. Furtehrmore, in those parts aimed at providing practical instructions, in which vernacular prevails as well, there are Russian Church Slavonicisms and Russian elements. However, this mixture of linguistic elements must not be attributed to the author's inability to write in pure vernacular. In fact, the only existing linguistic literary model in the Serbian culture of the time was Church Slavonic in its XVIII-century Russian form, artic- ulated in linguistic levels and increasingly oriented towards a spoken language in new literary genres far from ecclesiastical use. So, Orfelin's Slavenosrpski appears as a set of stylistic levels based on Church Slavonic and open to commissions with vernacular at every linguistic level, a way of writing that, even if it marks the beginning of system evolution towards the creation of a modern literary language, still remains anchored to tradition.

Дифференциация омоформ единственного и неединственного числа склоняемых частей речи в церковнославянском языке: к формулировке общего правила

A distinctive feature of the spelling of the contemporary Russian Church Slavonic is the so-called antistih (anti-verse) principle, that is a total, in as much as possible, elimination of grammatical homonymy, with a well-known arsenal of graphic and orthographic tools used: duplicates є, ѡ, ы and ѧ, diacritical marks apostrof (ἀπόστροφος) and kamora (circumflexus). Having considered various recommendations found in educational and scientific literature, and comparing them with the data of texts, the author came to the following conclusions. First, the system of orthographic principles of the Church Slavonic language has a hierarchical organization. Second, the principle of antistih (i.e. differentiating) occupies a dominant position in this hierarchy. Third, antistih has its own internal hierarchy. Fourth, the leading role in this internal hierarchy belongs to the opposition (distinction) of numeric homoforms. Fifth, the use of specific tools is subject to strict laws. The author offers a formulation of spelling rules for dissimilarizing singular and non-singular homophormes, taking into account the system-wide relations of spelling principles, the internal hierarchy of antistich, and the hierarchy of graphic and orthographic tools. The presence of such rules, i.e. an explicitly articulated algorithm, may not only contribute to the standardization of the language but also is valuable in terms of solving concrete practical tasks: methodical (presentation of material: from the teacher to the student), mnemonic (learning of material: from the student to the system of language), normalization per se (orientation in arsenal of linguistic tools: from the originator of the text to the linguistic norm).

An overview of the participles ending in -ci, -vsi and -m(i) from the perspective of the lexicographic description of the contemporary Serbian language

From the perspective of lexicography, this paper presents an analysis of participles ending in -ci, -vsi and -m(i), which in contemporary Serbian language fall within two categories: 1) the category of contemporary participial continuants, whose action is attributed to the noun as a temporary, current feature at a definite point in time, and 2) the category of adjectives that semantically correspond to past participles or to adjectives proper. As regards the descriptive dictionaries of the contemporary Serbian language, the participles ending in -ci, -vsi and -m(i) are lexicographically treated primarily in the Dictionary of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (the SASA Dictionary). Comparing the example sentences excerpted from various texts belonging to the contemporary standard Serbian language, on the one hand, with those excerpted from the SASA Dictionary, on the other, it can be noted that the SASA Dictionary does not contain examples of participle forms with the reflexive morpheme -se, while they can be said to be confirmed in other sources. This can be explained as resulting from the impact of the Serbian language norm, according to which participles do not belong to the contemporary standard Serbian language. This is especially true of forms containing the reflexive morpheme -se, which are not to be found in any modern grammar of the standard Serbian language. It is concluded in the paper that the SASA Dictionary treats the participle forms of both aforementioned categories and of three separate participle forms according to the verb tense (past and present) and voice (active and passive). As for the sources confirming the use of these forms, they can be found not only in those dating from the first half of the 19th century, when participles were commonplace in the literary language of Serbs, but also in the works of the 20th-century authors using the contemporary standard Serbian language. In accordance with that, the conclusion to be drawn is that participles should be treated and included in dictionaries, both in those whose compilation is ongoing (i.e. the SASA Dictionary) and in the future dictionaries of the contemporary Serbian language. The excerpted material shows that participles are used by prominent authors in Serbian science, religion and culture. As for the issue of which label to use for the indicated types of participles in the descriptive dictionary of the contemporary Serbian language, it is argued in this paper that in order to resolve it one should take into consideration at least two sets of facts related to the presented material. One refers to the examples of the formation of participles that in fact originate from the older layers of our literary language and which have been preserved in identical or similar form to this day (e.g. odsedsi, usopsi), while the other concerns participles created in a contemporary synchronic process involving contemporary verbs in current use and their meanings (dogorevajuca sveca, plac radjajucih stvorenja, etc.). The former set of examples is marked with standard labels, such as ?zast.? (?obsolete?), ?arh.? (?archaic?), ?rsl.? (?Russian Church Slavonic?), ?csl.? (?New Church Slavonic?), ?ssl.? (?Serbian Church Slavonic?), ?stknj. arh.? (?from earlier literary sources, old-fashioned?), used in the lexicographic description of participles in the SASA Dictionary, which can also be used in other descriptive dictionaries of the contemporary Serbian language to indicate the literary epoch in which a particular form of participle originated, or its pragmatic value. Concerning the latter set of participles, if they were to be introduced into a descriptive dictionary of the Serbian language, they would require different labels, since these are the words formed according to the participle-building pattern of the present-day synchronic lexical-grammatical process.

STIL I JEZIK KNEŽEVOG DNEVNIKA U ROMANU „BEZDNO“ SVETLANE VELMAR-JANKOVIĆ

In this paper, we dealt with the specific style and language of “The Diary” of the Duke Mihailo Obrenović in the novel Bezdno by Svetlana Velmar-Janković. We focused on the characteristics of the Slavonic-Serbian language. Our aim was to point out the stylistic and linguistic elements of this language and to analyze the historical and political circumstances that caused its creation. Special attention was given to numerous archaisms, which helped the writer to bring the spirit of this period to life. In order to detect and explain this style and language, we refered to the teachings of Aleksandar Mladenović. While trying to establish which version of the Cyrillic alphabet was actual at that time, we took Petar Đorđić’s book The History of the Serbian Cyrillic into consideration. We tried to explain the social circumstances which were a fruit- ful ground for the creation of this hybrid and inconsistent language thanks to Jovan Skerlić. We came to the conclusion that the Duke was fond of a specific version of the Slavonic-Serbian language – the Dositej version, which preserved the elements of the Slavonic-Serbian language primarily on its lexical level, while morfological and phonological levels remained the same. The Duke’s style and language altered during his writing. Later on, they resembled vernacular Serbian language more. In order to establish the role of archaisms in this novel, we made a list of them and noticed that Russian Church Slavonic, Slavonic-Serbian and Russian words have a dominance over Germanisms, Hungarisms and Romanisms. However, we could expect the opposite, while the Duke had spent almost two decades in the Western countries. The second place belongs to Turkisms, which are really hard to detect, because they became an integral part of the Serbian language.

Сочетания количественных числительных с относящимися к ним словами в Киево-Печерском патерике

The aim of this work is to examine the system of the syntactic relations of the cardinal numerals with the words which belong to them in the Kievo-Pecherskiy Paterikon that was compiled in the 13th century. The manuscript on the basis of which the text was published was copied in the late 15th – early 16th centuries. I am mainly searching those phenomena, which can give information about the conditions of the genesis and development of the numerals as a new independent part of speech. I am paying attention to the phenomena which can be connected with the unification of the several types of the syntactic relations of the cardinal numerals with their associated words. I am searching for all quantitative constructions except for the constructions containing the numeral 1 as a prime numeral. The found quantitative constructions are grouped according to the type of combination of cardinal numerals with names or participles. Particular attention is paid to the combinations of quantitative numerals with related words, which differ from the norms of other monuments, such as the Old Church Slavonic language of the Russian edition, Old Russian and early Russian Church Slavonic monuments, since it is these phenomena that can indicate the process of acquiring general morphological and syntactic properties by cardinal numerals. On the basis of the quantitative constructions that do not correspond to the above-mentioned norms, three important grammatical phenomena are distinguished that can indicate the process of replacing old norms with new ones. As a contrast I am showing data from the other manuscripts.

The Uniate Alteration of the Orthodox Treatise Zercalo bogoslovii

The article deals with the modification introduced by the Uniates to the Orthodox treatise Zercalo bogoslovii (1618), published in Pochaiv in 1790. The Uniate publishers created the Uniate roots of treatise, changed the language – a simple speech was replaced by the Russian Church Slavonic. Initial pages with the old title and preface to the reader were removed from the book, the title was rewritten, a new preface was written. The editors extended and corrected the content of the treatise, but they did not change the entire dogmatics – they did not add a chapter about the primacy of the Pope, and the dogma about the origin of the Holy Spirit was only partially changed in the spirit of Catholic theology, which sheds new light on the religious and cultural contacts between the Orthodox and the Uniates in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Ivan Fedorov’s Text of the Apostolos

The article considers the text of the Catholic Epistles in the four editions printed by Ivan Fedorov, i.e. the 1564 Apostolos, 1574 Apostolos, 1580 New Testament and Psalms, and the 1581 Ostroh Bible. The 1564 text follows the East Slavonic variant of the Fourth Redaction of the Apostolos, but with a number of revisions. Some of these are the result of linguistic updating, bringing the text into line with current norms of Russian Church Slavonic. Others represent readings from the First-Redaction text, particularly its commentated variant. Yet others have been introduced from the Vulgate or from one of the vernacular versions derived from it. This shows that some comparison was made with existing Slavonic and West European texts. There is no evidence that any Greek text was consulted. The 1574 text is almost exactly the same as that of 1564, but some further changes have been made to the texts of 1580 and 1581 (which are almost identical to each other). These are not numerous. In part they result from continued linguistic updating, and in part they restore some Fourth-Redaction readings, but in some cases the reason for them is unclear.

<em> stragùs </em>= sl. <em>*strogъ</em>

LITH. stragùs=SL. *strogъ SummaryLith. stragùs/stregùs „severe, stern, cruel, strong, vigorous, angry, obstinate...” is an old Baltic word the equivalents of which in other IE languages seem to be Common Slavic *strogъ „severe, cruel, strong...Э (Russian, Ukrainian строгий Belorussian строгi, Polish strogi, Czech, Slovak strohý etc.) and Middle High German strac (strack) „tight, taut, direct”, Middle Low Ger­man strak (strack) „stiff, fixed, firm, raised; stubborn, headstrong” and Anglo-Saxon strec „stiff, numb, severe, rigorous, stern, strong”. All these words probably belong to the IE root *(s)treg-„harden, become hard; hard, stiff...” the immediate continuants of which are attested in the East Baltic languages, cf. Lith. strė́gti „harden, congeal, freeze”, Latvian streģele, strēģele „icicle“ etc. The change of meaning from „harden, become hard; hard, stiff...” to „severe, cruel, strong, ri­gorous, angry, obstinate...” can easily be explained (cf. Lat. rigidus „hard, stiff… rude, cruel, vio­lent” and Lat. frīgus, -oris „frost; shudder, shiver”, Gr. ργος „frost; shudder, shiver”; Gr. στε­ρεός „hard, stiff, firm; obstinate; cruel” and Lith. star-ìnti „to make hard, stiff; stretch...” etc).Inspite of the fact that Latvian strieģele „icicle“ has the same meaning as Latvian streģele, strēģele, it probably belongs to quite a different root and may be identified with Lat. frīgus, -oris „frost; shudder, shiver” and Gr. ργος „frost; shudder, shiver” (<IE *srīgos~).Polish srogi „cruel, severe, violent...”, Middle Bulgarian sragь „terrible, frightful, dreadful”, Russian Church Slavonic срагъ „terrible, dreadful”, Old Church Slavonic sraga „disease“, Russian сорога „a gloomy, difficult man” must in all probability be distinguished from the two groups of words mentioned above and identified with Lith. sir̃gti „to be ill”, sargìnti, sárgalioti „to be ailing, to be sickly” and Latvian sìrgt ,,to be ill”, sę̀rga „ilness, disease”, srgalât „to be ailing”.

The Ritual Language of the British Columbia Doukhobors as an Endangered Functional Style: Issues of Interference and Translatability

Currently, there are about 13,000 persons of Doukhobor descent living in the Province of British Columbia (mainly in the West Kootenay area). Roughly 60% still speak Doukhobor Russian. Ritual activities among the Doukhobors depend largely on orally transmitted prayers, psalms, and hymns that are based on Russian Church Slavonic; home life in those homes where Russian is still used is conducted in a 19th century South Russian dialect with both Ukrainian and English admixtures. The effort at preventing a full-scale language shift to English is an example of a communal decision to maintain and revive a language in terms of given needs; there are many spokesmen in the Doukhobor community, however, who advocate an emphasis on shifting to world languages (English, Standard Russian). The percentage of Doukhobors, especially in the generation born after 1970, subscribing to this view is increasing, thus raising the much-debated question whether the decline of a language or of a functional style necessarily entails the loss of a culture and of the disappearance of ritual practices. Many First Nations communities, e.g., Cree in Alberta, are engaged in an active endeavour of reversing language shift partly as a necessary healing process. It seems that their efforts serve at least as partial support for maintaining the Doukhobor ritual style, perhaps in a “reconfigured” form allowing codeswitching between cognitive structures (in English) and contextual-mnemonic devices (in Russian/Church Slavonic).

Легенда о святой Урсуле в старой польской и восточнославянской письменности (XVI-XVII вв.)

The variant of the Saint-Ursula-legend, which is preserved in the Polish chronicle written by Maciej Stryjkowski (Königsberg 1582) and put in the Hunnish period, is an unaltered borrowing from Cyprian Bazylik's Polish translation (Cracow 1574) of Miklós Oláh's work (Nicolaus Olahus) Athila (Basel 1568). Around 1580 an anonymous Belorussian translation was made from this Polish version in Vilna (Vilnius). As Cyprian Bazylik, the first translator did not indicate the name of the author (that is of Miklós Oláh) in his Polish translation (1574), the later translators, both Stryjkowski and the unknown Belorussian one, carried on this legend without mentioning its author. Later, in the 17th century Stryjkowski's chronicle was translated twice into Russian Church Slavonic and in this way the Ursula-legend, as part of these translations, got into the Russian literature in the version formulated by the Hungarian humanist Miklós Oláh. At the end of our study we publish the text of the Ursula-legend in the following variants: 1) the original Latin work of Miklós Oláh (1568), 2) Cyprian Bazylik's Polish translation (1574), 3) the anonymous Old Belorussian manuscript translation (around 1580), 4) the legend according to the Polish chronicle of Maciej Stryjkowski (1582), 5) the anonymous Russian Church Slavic translations of 1673-1679 and 6) 1688.

On Church Slavonic Accentuation: The Accentuation of a Russian Church Slavonic Gospel Manuscript from the Fifteenth Century

On Church Slavonic accentuation : the accentuation of a Russian Church Slavonic gospel manuscript from the fifteenth century

A Russian Church Slavonic Kannonik, 1331-1332. A Comparative Textural and Structural Study Including an Analysis of the Russian Computus. A. H. van den Baar

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsA Russian Church Slavonic Kannonik, 1331-1332. A Comparative Textural and Structural Study Including an Analysis of the Russian Computus. A. H. van den Baar Edward KeenanEdward Keenan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 47, Number 3Jul., 1972 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2856183 Copyright 1972 The Mediaeval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A Russian Church Slavonic Kanonnik (1331-1332): A Comparative Textual And Structural Study Including An Analysis Of The Russian Computus (Scaliger 38B, Leyden University Library). By A. H. van den Boar. The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1968. 303 pp. 74 Dutch guilders.

A Russian Church Slavonic Kanonnik (1331-1332): A Comparative Textual And Structural Study Including An Analysis Of The Russian Computus (Scaliger 38B, Leyden University Library). By A. H. van den Boar. The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1968. 303 pp. 74 Dutch guilders.

A Russian Church Slavonic Kanonnik (1331-1332)

A Russian Church Slavonic Kanonnik (1331-1332)

НАПОМЕНЕ О МОРФОЛОШКОЈ СТРУКТУРИ ДОКУМЕНАТА АРХИВА МАНАСТИРА САВИНА (18. ВЕК)

У раду се анализира морфолошка структура докумената који се чувају у Архиву манастира Савина, а написани су у 18. веку ‒ у манастиру или у околним областима које припадају источнохерцеговачком дијалекатском простору. Истраживање се реализује како би се применом тзв. статистичке методе описала морфолошка структура анализираних текстова, те уочило време продирања књишких (рускословенских) карактеристика. Посебна пажња посвећена је појединим регионалним цртама, карактеристичним за говоре северозападне Боке и ширег подручја источне Херцеговине.

A Note on the Russian Aspects

T HE elementary student of Russian, if he is not a trained philologist, is puzzled at the very beginning by the peculiarities in the use of the Russian aspects. The noun is for him merely a complicated declension which differs in degree but not in kind from that which we see in German, Latin, and Greek, but the verb introduces elements which seem extremely alien to our methods of thought. The present note is not intended to do more than give certain guides to the problem for practical use. In old Russian, prior to the sixteenth century, there do exist imperfects and aorists which function in a manner similar to the corresponding tenses in the other Indo-European languages. These dropped out and when the first reform of Russian took place in the seventeenth century survived only in the Russian Church Slavonic. In the eighteenth century, when the grammar was standardized on the model of Latin and the Latin terminology was adopted, they were definitely removed from the colloquial language as taught at the time. The grammarians, seeing the developed Latin tensesystem, sought for a substitute in their own language and achieved this by a fitting of the aspects into the tense-system to supply the future by the present of the perfective aspect. This is all very well so far as it goes, but a careful study of such a book as Mazon's Aspects du verbe russe will show that there are a large number of cases where the aspects have preserved something of their original meaning, even in the Russian classics of the nineteenth century. The original difference between the imperfective and perfective aspects is very similar to that which we find between the Greek perfect and aorist subjunctives and optatives and between the imperfect and aorist indicatives. The imperfective aspects represent a continuing process. The perfectives are without any durative sense and view the action as a mere puncture in eternity. They do not even imply completion of an action, except in so far as the mere naming of an action implies that it is carried through to completion. They merely state the fact of seeing, reading, etc., without comment or implication. Since the present is a rapidly passing instant, the use of the present perfective implies either the past or the future and it is from this circumstance, that the grammarians of the eighteenth century boldly equated the form with the future. We have the same tendency in the simple present in English but we use it so rarely that we do not think of it normally and rapidly. The following rough sketch of the relations between the English forms and the Russian is based on practical experience and will supply perhaps eighty per cent correctness in the use of the Russian aspects. It is not based on the history of the usage of these aspects.