Tense and Aspect in Slavonic Languages : A Study in Text Linguistics

本研究的目的是从语篇语言学的角度考察斯拉夫语在其历史的早期是如何产生和发展时态和时态系统的。本研究基于三种基本资料的分析：(1)古教会斯拉夫福音书；(2)古俄罗斯编年史；(3)两部斯拉夫圣徒传记，即《圣西里尔传》和《圣摩多迪乌传》。在我们研究项目的第一年，我们基于(1)和(2)的数据进行了研究。我们仔细研究了希腊福音书的文本及其古教会斯拉夫语译本，并严格比较了动词的时态和时态形式的用法。我们还研究了俄罗斯最重要的两部古代编年史，即《俄罗斯初级编年史》（Povest' vremennykh let）和《第一部诺夫哥罗德编年史》（Synodal copy），并试图从俄罗斯文学语言发展的角度来确定这两部编年史的文本结构与语言特征之间的关系。在我们研究项目的第二年，我们研究了第三种数据，即St. Cyril的生活和St. Methodius的生活。我们阅读了这两部圣徒传的详细和删节版本的一些文本，并根据它们的用途分类了语言形式。因此，我们对古教会斯拉夫福音书和古俄语编年史中数量有限的完成时的使用进行了一些有趣的观察。然而，对中世纪斯拉夫语言的时态和语态的整个系统的研究现在正在进行中，需要更多的研究。

The purpose of this study is to examine how the systems of tense and aspect came into existence and developed in Slavonic languages in the early periods of their history from the viewpoint of text linguistics.This study is based on the analysis of three kinds of fundamental data : (1) Old Church Slavonic Gospels, (2) Old Russian chronicles, (3) Two Slavic hagiographies, namely The Life of St. Cyril and The Life of St. Methodius.In the first year of our research project we carried out the study on the basis of the data of (1) and (2). We examined closely the text of Greek Gospels and their Old Church Slavonic translation and compared strictly uses of tense and aspect forms of verbs. We studied also two most important old Russian chronicles, namely The Russian Primary Chronicle (Povest' vremennykh let) and The First Novgorod Chronicle (Synodal copy), and tried to define the correlation between structures of the text and linguistic features of two chronicles from the viewpoint of the development of the Russian literary language.In the second year of our research project we studied the third kind of data, namely The Life of St. Cyril and The Life of St. Methodius. We read some of the texts of detailed and abridged versions of these two hagiographies and classified verbal forms according to their uses. As a result of this, we made some interesting observations on the use of the perfect that was limited in number in Old Church Slavonic Gospels as well as in Old Russian chronicles. The study of the whole systems of tense and aspect of mediaeval Slavonic languages is, however, now in progress and requires more examination.