Studies in languages of medieval Slavonic texts

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This project aims to study linguistic features of various medieval Slavonic texts from the viewpoint of text linguistics, paying special attention to the relationship between Old Church Slavonic (below OCS.) and other medieval Slavonic literary languages. The results of the study can be summarized as follows.1. The use of verbs of speech in OCS.has been studied. Having studied the distributions of two most important verbs of speech glagolati "to say" and resti "to tell", we have come to a conclusion as follows : the former is used to confirm the presence of the speech act itself in the context where it can not be predicted, the latter is used to introduce utterances with rather important content in the context where the occurrence of a speech act can be predicted.2. The language of the text of the narrative type in Old Russian chronicles and the language of OCS Gospels have been compared. The former is used in order to describe the events belonging to the secular, not to ecclesiastical, world and, from the traditional viewpoint, should be treated as reflecting features of native East Slavic languages. Our study, to the contrary, has shown that at the level of syntax, especially concerning word order and the use of such forms as ze and onb, it could be under a strong influence of OCS.3. The language of the lives of St. Cyril and St.Methodius has been studied. They have been considered here as taking some intermediate place between Old Russian chronicles and OCS Gospels, and an attempt has been made to make clear their linguistic features. This aim, however, has not been fully achieved. Now, having computerized some facsimile versions of these lives and translated them into Japanese, we are in the process of their analysis.