Functioning of Composite Preterites in the Ancient Literary Heritage

• Main Author: O.F. Zholobov
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Kazan Federal University 2016-10-01
• Series: Učënye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta: Seriâ Gumanitarnye Nauki
• Subjects: historical grammar; so - called perfect; composite preterite fun c- tioning; literary heritage; Old Russian language; so-called perfect; composite preterite functioning
• Online Access: http://kpfu.ru/portal/docs/F852131667/158_5_gum_2.pdf

The paper deals with certain issues of the preterite history in the Old Russian language, which is still unclear and, thus, of high importance. The so-called perfect forms occupy the central place in the history of past tense forms. The purpose of the paper is to consider certain issues related to the perfect status and semantics in the Old Russian language of the early period. To achieve this purpose, the following tasks have been fulfilled: a) historiographic analysis of the term “perfect” in palaeoslavistics and Indo-European linguistics has been carried out; b) critical review of the researchers’ opinions on the Old Slavonic perfect functional-semantic nature has been given; c) the perfect functioning in some Old Russian sources has been considered; d) a new hypothesis of the Slavonic perfect formation and the nature of its original semantics has been given. The study uses the descriptive, diachronic, and pragmatic-discursive methods. The term “Perfect” was first introduced by Franz Miklosich. It was borrowed from the Latin grammar and did not correspond to its nature in the Old Slavonic sources. Nevertheless, the term consolidated in the historical slavistics. As a rule, the Slavonic perfect is interpreted in the same way as the Indo-European one, which the Slavs did not preserve. It is defined as an action in the past, the result of which is preserved in the present. This definition has been disproved by the fact that the so-called perfect was originally used among the Slavs only in the direct speech, not always having a resultativeness value. The analysis of the early sources performed in the paper has not confirmed the conclusions about early transformation of the perfect into the past tense universal form. The provided data indicate that the perfect originally referred to the events in the past, the reality of which was verified in the act of speech, in the present tense.