and written language: meeting
in the Runet space
L.V. Kutyrkina,
Ph.D., vice-rector
The fact that language or communication is closely interconnected is obvious. There are many positions in the interpretation of this relationship in general, and the nature of the influence of communication on the process of language formation, in particular.
Language is formed only in communication, and communication is carried out exclusively through language. Language is an invaluable preserver. It preserves and transmits in time and space the accumulated experience of human communities. But this invaluable function of language is revealed only in communication. We can say that language is a living organism, the life of which is supported by being within communication. Outside of it, language is dead. Of course, language is one of the highest values of culture, but if the conditions of communication or life change, certain changes occur in language and culture.
Now let's get to the topic. Indeed, everything around us is changing. Communication also changes, its conditions, the space in which communication occurs - which in turn affects the language. Let me give you a simple example: in today's written language, primarily on the Internet, in SMS, many abbreviations have appeared. This is due to the fact that, firstly, the number of characters for SMS is simply limited, and secondly, the typing speed on a telephone or computer keyboard is slower than speech. To compensate for this lack of written language, more abbreviations are made. At the same time, there is an opinion that teenage speech is characterized by a “telegraphic style”, which takes root thanks to the widespread spread of electronic discourse as a result of the use of mobile phones with services.
som SMS, email, ICQ and Internet chats. Accordingly, in the language of teenagers, simple constructions are increasingly used, with the help of which they can convey their thoughts as quickly as possible. This is a very simple example of how communication conditions influence language.
In the history of mankind, there are two forms of existence of language and two corresponding forms of communication. This is oral and written communication. Written is secondary to oral and appeared later. With the help of writing, information can be transmitted across space and time. Oral speech is instantaneous, therefore it is poorly preserved (at least before the invention of recording devices) and is not transmitted over time and over long distances. And such a need arises constantly.
One more remark needs to be made regarding the origin of the letter. Verbs meaning “to write” in different languages tend to be etymologically traced back to two ideas. The first is the idea of scratching, the second is the idea of applying paint to the surface. It is clear what this is connected with. These are two traditional ways of depicting signs. Today the situation has changed. We are increasingly dealing with text on a phone or computer screen, but we do not write it - in that very original sense. We press the keys and letters appear on the screen. Today, if we talk about writing, we talk about how it is done, not how it is perceived. Today we mean visual (not written) speech.
With the advent of the Internet, a new communication space emerges, which leads to a qualitative transformation of the language. With the advent of a huge new sphere of communication, it can be argued that a certain intermediate type of communication has appeared, which in some sense is written (visual), and in some sense oral. According to the method of perception, this is, of course, visual speech, that is, it is perceived by the eyes. Also for some other characteristics. For example, we may take long pauses during a conversation, which is unacceptable during an oral conversation. Dialogue spurs us on to instantaneous responses. So technically it's written language. But from the point of view of the structure of the language used, it is certainly oral.
Let me make a reservation that we are talking about conversational genres of the Internet, about such speech areas as forums, chats, ICQ, blogs, comments on blogs, etc. If we consider this speech from the point of view of its structure, it is much closer to oral. This applies to designs and some formal techniques. It is important to note here that communication from the oral sphere is generally moving to the Internet. We very often do in writing what we previously did orally. Some problems that used to be solved with a phone call can now be solved with
through correspondence. Part of our communication has moved to this “written” phase in terms of execution and perception techniques.
If we begin to communicate more or more actively in writing on the Internet, we understand that this speech is somehow not good. Both types of communication - oral and written - have their advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of written speech are that it is well stored and transmitted over long distances. In addition, it is more normative. Because it is stored, it can be analyzed. But spoken language also has great advantages. And many linguists prefer to study it. It is historically primary. And at the synchronous level, written speech is more like a recording of oral speech. Spoken speech is much faster than written speech. For oral speech, speed is certainly an advantage. And finally, it is much richer than the written version. Volume, intonation, special accents in the voice are a kind of way of expressing the emotions and feelings of those participating in communication. There are many words that cannot be written down. Interjections like “Hm”, “A”, “E”, etc. Even the so-called “ekanye” performs certain functions. All this is the wealth of oral speech. You can convey a lot with it. Sometimes a written phrase causes offense, and then it turns out that there was irony in it, but the reader did not catch it in writing.
So, if communication in the Internet space moves into the area of writing, then we are faced with the problem of the subject’s self-presentation, which is necessary in the conditions of communication, exclusively through text, through written speech. And the question inevitably arises about compensation in writing for other components of verbal communication. We begin to communicate in a mode close to the mode of oral speech. In real time". Inevitably, there must be an enrichment of written language so that we can convey what cannot be conveyed by standard written language. The simplest example is emoticons. At first, very simple ones appeared, consisting of a bracket and a colon: “):” and “(:”. What do such emoticons correspond to? For example, they demonstrate irony. As if “joke” is written in brackets. In principle, they can perform different functions. They can convey a mood. Now we have whole sets of faces, from which we select the appropriate one and automatically insert it into the text.
Recently, other means have appeared. I will give two examples. The first is strikethrough text. In fact, the possibility of striking out has always existed in writing. This meant that the person was destroying part of his text. They usually crossed it out so that it was impossible to read. Or they rewrote it completely. But internet strikethrough does not indicate text that should be destroyed. The text that they want to destroy is simply erased. They cross out exactly what they mean. And then they seem to say something else out loud (not written down)
whip). A game and a new dimension of the text arises. Along with what is said, what the author thinks appears. Perhaps this is just one of the functions of strikethrough. We see that here written speech turns out to be richer than oral speech, because in the process of speaking I do not broadcast what I really think at the moment of speech. I may blurt it out deliberately, but this is already a rather subtle game. Here it is such a simple technique.
Another way is to describe behavior. As a rule, this is taken in asterisks. For example, *embarrassed* or *frowns*. This is very similar to the author's stage directions in a theater play, a kind of self-assessment that also adds a new dimension to the text.
There are many more different techniques. Case is actively used, that is, upper and lowercase letters. Moreover, many believe that capital letters are simply an analogue of volume. Different fonts, etc. These examples show that communication aims to enrich its written form of language.
Some people will not understand what the Russian word lytdybr is. Its author, Tartu philologist Roman Leibov, is known (as is often possible on the Internet) on his blog. That’s what he called his entry, writing the word “diary” in the Latin layout, as if mixing up the register, then it was transliterated back into Cyrillic, and it turned out “lytdybr”. Now it is common among bloggers. And the technique itself began to be used quite often in the formation of nicknames and Internet pseudonyms. For example, Fedya can call himself Atlz. Such meaningless combinations of letters are found from time to time in Russian texts precisely as a result of the “Mix up the case” technique.
Now one more thing. Even in Soviet times, there were many abbreviations in the Russian language. But, as I already said, in the Internet language and SMS language, the formation of abbreviations has received a new impetus and incentive. Other abbreviations began to appear. Among the most famous are “IMHO,” which means “In my humble opinion.” It also exists in the Russian version and is written as “IMHO”. This is just a transliteration. There are other English abbreviations that are often used in Russian texts. I would say “LOL”, which means “very funny”. And also “aka” - “also known as”. But in Russian such abbreviations were not accepted. Let's look at standard Russian abbreviations: USSR, TASS, collective farm, university. These are names, that is, groups of nouns. And the English abbreviations considered make up entire expressions. And the emergence of just such abbreviations is now taking place on the Russian Internet. I will give a few lesser-known examples: EVPOCHA, EMNIP. The first is “If you understand what I mean,” the second is “If my memory serves me right.” Or NWOT - “Sorry for being off-topic.” Or widely
extended TTT - “Pah-pah-pah.” Please note that the bulk of the words are associated with a response cue. This is an assessment of some text or post. There were almost no analogues in the Russian language. Although one is well known: the famous abbreviation of Leo Tolstoy EBZh - “If we (are) alive.” Tolstoy often ended his letters with this. We see that this is a phenomenon for a narrow circle. As, by the way, it is now. All these words originate in a very narrow circle. And only then do some of them manage to break through into broader spheres. Thus, Lytdybr has gone beyond the blogosphere and is found, for example, in the media.
Their emergence is caused by the influence of the English language, but partly also by new conditions of communication, saving time and money, as well as the gaming element. It is possible to assume that this use of Russian versions of abbreviations on an equal basis with English ones is a kind of “leveling” of the importance of languages for an Internet user.
So, with the spread of the Internet, we are faced with a new situation where communication has partially transferred to the written sphere. Written language becomes as spontaneous as spoken language. Previously, there was almost no uncontrolled writing. All texts in the format of a public message were edited, proofread, and finally censored. There were uncontrolled genres, for example, personal letters, but they, as a rule, were not public. Before the Internet, most Russian speakers were “mute” in writing. On the one hand, a person who enters the Internet for the first time says: “Oh, horror! Here they speak absolutely illiterately.” Very low literacy rate because such masses have never been involved in the process of written communication. And this is correct, because the Internet today is mass communication. But there has never been mass written communication. In the USSR, people wrote essays. And they never took the pen in their hand again. Only educated people wrote personal letters. It wasn't massive. And today people blog almost every day. This is another level. After all, when did they start talking about the dying of the epistolary genre? In the 20th century, long before the Internet. Thus, the average level fell. But the level of the entire people, if we talk about the culture of speech, has grown significantly. Everyone learns to speak in writing.
And the problem of literacy, or following norms and rules, arises. For example, following writing rules and a dictionary. How the formation of language “norms” and the process of deviation from generally accepted norms occurs today. What language rules are Internet users guided by today? He enters different spellings of words in Yandex and selects the one that occurs most often as the correct one. Experiments with competing spellings provide ample examples. So, in the process of typing the name of the capital of Estonia, Yandex gives
tips for both Tallinn and Tallinn. Further, the following statistics are given: for Tallinn it produces 5 million pages, for Tallinn - 7 million. Previously, competition for spellings was encountered mainly for proper names. But today variability in written language is a very relevant thing. Previously, we encountered variability almost exclusively in oral speech, that is, it is written the same but pronounced differently, for example, stress in the words “cottage cheese”, “briefcase”. Today, written variability is an absolutely real thing. Written communication became alive. And if previously written speech reached the reader, passing through an editor and proofreader and becoming exemplary, now this is not the case. And the problem of choice of spelling became very important.
We see how the norm and actual use diverge. And linguists are forced to take this into account. Because an ordinary person will not look for a dictionary, but will type the word in a search engine. Moreover, Yandex and other computer tools quite actively influence our literacy. Yandex provides tips of varying degrees of aggressiveness. Sometimes, even when you type the correct spelling of a word, the search engine gives the following hint: “There may be a typo in the original query. Search result for...” - and then offers statistics for the “correct” (from his point of view) spelling. It is clear that such tools influence literacy, and to a greater extent than dictionaries and grammars.
The situation is aggravated by the spread of a style of deliberate distortion of the rules of spelling words on the Runet at the beginning of the 21st century. “Padon-Kaffa” or “Albanian” yezig (Albanian language) is a style of using the Russian language with phonetically almost correct, but deliberately incorrect spelling of words (the so-called errative), frequent use of profanity and certain cliches characteristic of slangs.
The speed with which this phenomenon has spread among Russian users is amazing. In many ways, the spread of “Albanian” was helped by “Live Journal” - the largest collection of diaries of people from different parts of the world, open to varying degrees for comments. LJ communicates with a huge number of people from different parts of the world. And exactly at the speed of communication, the new language “padonkoff” spread across the Internet and became the language of the Runet population. It is believed that this style, based on deliberately incorrect spelling, spread spontaneously on the Internet as a grotesque reaction to numerous spelling errors in Internet publications and comments. This Runet phenomenon is close to the popular English-language Internet language LOLspeak.
It can be assumed that a similar linguistic phenomenon was known back in the 19th century among young people who wanted to stand out. (Tynyanov “Kyukhlya”).
It is believed that the appearance of padonkoff jargon on the Internet was due to the activities of Dmitry Sokolovsky, administrator of the site udaff.com. The predecessor of the Padonki language is the language of the Kaschenites, a special group of people who lived in the Fidonet echo conference SU.KASCHENKO.LOCAL. It was the Kaschenites who were the first to come up with the idea of writing words deliberately incorrectly.
The structure of the Padonkoff language consists of rules for spelling words with intentional misspellings, but the meaning of the language must remain the same or from the Padonkoff dictionary. “Authtars” write “creatives”. “Comments” are left under “creatives.” The most common: “Afftar burns”, “Go further”, “Afftor, drink poison”, “ftopka”. What are the functions of deliberate distortions that are used in the “Albanian” language?
Of undoubted interest is the work of Thomas Wetzschtein and co-authors, who describe “the internal reality of the network scene” and “the position of networkers in the “non-vertical” social space.” The authors of the book about network culture consider it as a “sub-world”, or a specialized partial culture that has its own independence and border due to the fact that it has only its own patterns of behavior and meaning. In particular, there is a hypothesis according to which the language of Internet communication in its transformations is subordinated not so much to the practical needs of the participants in communication, but to the communication game. In other words, it is not so important for the user to increase the permeability of information, but to make his own presence on the Internet extremely visible.
An important function of the language of communication on the Internet, including the use of specific slang constructions, performs the function of self-presentation of a participant in communication, identifying his belonging to a particular community. To a certain extent, the use of certain slang carries with it a certain ideological meaning that is shared by the user.
In conclusion, I would also like to say something about the mutual influence of written and oral forms of language. Language is not only a way of communication, but also a way of thinking. Are the trends we've described here influencing thinking? After all, dialogue was previously possible between two or three people. And on the Internet, a dialogue can be between thousands of people, while remaining a dialogue at the same time. Does this affect thinking?
It affects, and in very different ways. Research into such influences is just beginning. As for the facts that I spoke about, I can, for example, mention variability. Acceptability and tolerance of variability is a very important thing. On the Internet it's higher
than outside it. On the Internet, you very often communicate with people who write differently than you, speak differently than you, and hold different views. This can be avoided in life. So in a way it promotes tolerance.
There is a hypothesis that when a generation of young people, partly raised on Internet jargon, grows up, there will be a merger of the high Russian language with the language of the Internet. Will words from the language of the Internet enter the everyday life of adults? After all, people who use the “Albanian language” are now not even twenty.
But the situation, according to researchers, in particular Maxim Krongauz, is not so simple. The author of the “Albanian language” is much older. The language of “bastards” was created, in particular, by Dmitry Sokolovsky. These are people over 35-40 years old. And fully educated, intelligent people use this language with pleasure. Another thing is that they are aware of their participation in a certain game, that is, when entering the Internet, they switch the register.
As for important psychological changes, this is, perhaps, precisely the loss by young people of the ability to switch register. This is connected not only with the Internet, but also with slang in general. Slang has always existed. But before, children very clearly knew how to switch registers. And when they came home, they spoke a different language than they used in the yard. Today it's almost gone. Not quite, of course, but it went away. Jargon is found in the speech of politicians and educated people. This border is almost non-existent. There will be a merger in the future. What you call high language will simply fall by the wayside. I know many people who admire the language of the first wave of emigrants and their children. But as soon as you start communicating with these people (emigrants) on current topics, their language is simply not enough. Such a conserved language, which is called high, is in fact unsuitable for describing living processes. So what we are dissatisfied with as the pollution and corruption of language is not corruption, but rather the adaptation of language to our life. These are inevitable processes that are happening and will continue to happen.
The difficulty is that life adapts to language. After all, language serves not only to describe life, but also to construct it. But this is another complex topic for another study.
Sound, the most natural form of language existence, was the only one for a long time. The language was only spoken. But such speech is momentary, it sounds only “here” and “now”. The need to transmit speech over a distance and store it for long periods of time led to the invention of writing - written speech appeared.
At first, written language was only a recording of spoken speech, “a frozen moment.” Then it turned out that the difference - to sound and to be written - is so huge, such its consequences emerged that it became possible to talk about two languages - predominantly sound, oral, and predominantly written. Written language is more capacious for intellectual information, oral- to express emotions, moods, relationships.
Actually, the linguistic differences between written and spoken speech are primarily syntactic differences. Oral language does not tolerate difficulties, but cultivates understatement. Written, on the contrary, requires full expression and, moreover, coherence, therefore it allows for various inclusions, additions, and explanations. But most importantly, the written language required the establishment of rules for writing and reading. Thanks to him, grammatical arts arose in the names we are familiar with - spelling, punctuation. An indispensable property of written language is the binding nature of norms that prescribe how to write and read.
Are different themselves laws of oral and written communication.
Therefore, even in the same situation, it is almost impossible to say and write in the same way. This is how it is played out in a letter from playwright A. N. Ostrovsky to his friend N. A. Dubrovsky: “Nikolka! Why don’t you lead Vetlitsky and where the hell are you? Will you listen to me? Well, just wait! You can’t write it like that, that’s just what I thought, but you have to write it like this:
“Dear sir Nikolai Alexandrovich, would you like to welcome me today directly from the office to the dining table, which will greatly oblige A. Ostrovsky, who deeply respects you and is devoted to you.” Distribution of spheres between spoken and written language
essential not only for communication, but also for culture. Oral language skills - folklore, propaganda, rumors. Everything else - politics, science and learning, fiction in all its genre richness - is served by the written language.
A new stage in the development of the Russian national and literary-written language begins in the second half of the 14th century. and is associated with the formation of a centralized state around Moscow. Feudal fragmentation is replaced by a new unification of East Slavic lands in the northeast. This unification was the reason for the formation of the Great Russian nationality, which gradually included all speakers of the Russian language who were under the rule of the Tatar-Mongols. In parallel, in the XIII-XV centuries. those parts of the East Slavic population that managed to escape the Tatar-Mongol conquest (in the west) are part of the Lithuanian-Russian principality, on the territory of which the Western Russian nationality is formed, which soon split into the Belarusian (under the rule of Lithuania) and the Ukrainian (under the rule of Poland) nationalities. Thus, first feudal fragmentation, and then the Tatar-Mongol conquest and seizure of Western Russian lands by Lithuania and Poland become the reason for the division of the once united Old Russian (East Slavic) people into three East Slavic ones: Great Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian. The common historical fate of the three fraternal peoples determined the closest proximity between all three languages of the East Slavic peoples and at the same time ensured their independent, independent development.
Written literary language of all East Slavic branches in the XIV-XV centuries. continues to develop on the same general basis of the Old Russian language until the 17th century. remains unified, breaking up only into zonal variants.
In the process of formation of the Great Russian people and their language, Moscow plays a prominent role. From the 9th century The territory where the capital of our country is now located became a place of settlement for East Slavic tribes. As archaeological excavations show, representatives of two tribal associations have long come into contact in this territory: the northern and eastern parts were occupied by the Krivichi, the southern and western by the Vyatichi. Their burial mounds are included in the ring of modern “Greater Moscow”. Thus, from the very beginning of its development, the Moscow land became an area of inter-tribal communication.
In October 1947, the 800th anniversary of the city of Moscow was solemnly celebrated, but this date is conditional: under 1147 we read the first mention of the name of Moscow on the pages of written sources, namely the “Suzdal Chronicle”, where it is reported under the named year that Suzdal Prince Yuri Dolgoruky appointed a meeting with his ally, the Chernigov prince Svyatoslav Olgovich, “in Moscow,” which at that time was only a princely fortified castle near the border of the Suzdal land with the Chernigov land. This explains the choice of meeting place.
The city of Moscow grew and developed rapidly due to its favorable geographical position at the crossroads of two water trade routes from the southwest (from the Kyiv land) to the northeast (to the Middle Volga region) and from the northwest (from Novgorod) to the southeast (to lower reaches of the Oka and Volga).
This also contributed to the influx of population to Moscow from various East Slavic lands and the formation of a mixed dialect on its territory.
By the time of the Tatar-Mongol conquest, Moscow had become a rich commercial and industrial center, which recovered relatively quickly after its defeat by nomads in the winter of 1238. The period of Tatar rule also had a favorable impact on the growth of Moscow, since the Moscow princes were able to make the Tatar-Mongol khans an instrument of their unification politicians. By the end of the 13th century. The Moscow principality is allocated as an independent inheritance from the Vladimir-Suzdal principality. True, at first this principality was the smallest and most insignificant, falling into the possession of the youngest son of Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky, Daniil. His sons, Yuri and especially Ivan, nicknamed Kalita (wallet) for his frugality, did a lot to strengthen the power of Moscow. Ivan Kalita receives from the hands of the khans a label for the great reign of Vladimir. His descendants firmly hold the grand ducal power in their hands, and Moscow becomes an all-Russian center.
Since 1326, the then head of the Russian Church, Metropolitan Peter, has chosen Moscow as his residence. And this also contributed to the attraction of cultural forces and material resources to the church, which consecrated with its authority the power of the emerging centralized state.
Finally, in 1380, the victory won over the hordes of the Golden Horde temnik Mamai by Ivan Kalita’s grandson Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy, who led the united Russian forces, showed and proved to all Russian people the correctness of the policy of the Moscow princes.
The East Slavic population continued to concentrate around Moscow, fleeing from Tatar raids behind the dense forests that surrounded the city at that time. As an analysis of the oldest monuments of Moscow writing shows, at first the residents of Moscow used the dialect of the northeastern group, the Vladimir-Suzdal type. However, the further, the more one feels the influence on this initially Northern Russian dialect basis of the Southern Russian speech element, which is increasingly intensifying in the Moscow dialect.
An analysis of the language of early Moscow writing shows, as already noted, that initially the population of Moscow, at least within the boundaries of the princely court, adhered to the Northern Russian pronunciation. For example, in the Spiritual Charter of Ivan Kalita of 1327-1328. we find the following writings: Ofonasey, Ostafyevo etc. However, already in the entry with praise for Prince Ivan Kalita on the “Siysky Gospel” of 1340, one can notice a reflection of the apologetic South Russian pronunciation: “who let him into the lands.” In the monuments of the 15th and especially the 16th centuries. akanye becomes the dominant feature of Moscow pronunciation, and such pronunciation also extends to vocabulary of Northern Russian origin: see spelling naughty girl(household) in the Konshinsky list of “Domostroy”.
The Moscow dialect becomes the dialectal basis of the language of the entire Great Russian people, and as certain Russian lands are included in the emerging centralized Moscow state, the features of the leading dialect spread throughout the entire Great Russian territory. This same Central Russian mixed dialect is turning into a dialect base for a literary and written language, serving the needs of the entire Great Russian people. The Old Russian literary and written language, transplanted to new soil, forms the Moscow variety of the written language, which initially developed alongside its other branches. As the territory of the Moscow state expanded, all branches of the written language were gradually replaced by the Muscovite variety, especially after the introduction of printing from the end of the 16th century. Other varieties of the Old Russian literary and written language, which developed on the territory of the Lithuanian state and Poland, then became the source of the Belarusian (from the 15th century) and Ukrainian (from the 16th century) languages that were gradually forming in parallel with the language of the Great Russian people.
Let us turn to a more detailed analysis of the language of early Moscow writing. Along with the spiritual letters of the first Moscow princes, Ivan Kalita, his sons - Simeon Ivanovich Proud and Ivan Ivanovich, and his grandson Dmitry Donskoy, the above-mentioned entry on the “Siysky Gospel”, dating from 1340, is among the monuments of early writing. The entry states that The church book of the gospel-aprakos was rewritten “in the city of Moscow on the Dvina... by command” of Grand Duke Ivan, which shows the importance of Moscow as an all-Russian center that supplied even the distant North with church books. Along with this, the record contains an enthusiastic description of the activities of the Moscow prince, which is a kind of literary work - “Praise to Ivan Kalita.” It is contained on l. 216 of the manuscript on both sides, occupying two columns, and represents a rare case of an ancient Russian literary monument preserved in an autograph to this day. This is especially valuable for the history of a literary language, since the analysis of a monument does not require preliminary textual research. The clerks Melenty and Prokosha proved themselves to be experienced authors, outstanding experts in various languages and literary-traditional texts. For example, there is a Hebrew phrase this upyk, which, apparently, should be read as aruko hay, i.e., the designation of the Talmudic calendar term “long year,” when, according to the Jewish calendar, an additional month, “second Adar,” is inserted in order to equalize the lag of the lunar year from the solar year (a, 4), the Hebrew name of the month Nissan(a, 7); Roman designation
dates: “in E_. And. kaland m(s_)tsa March” (a, 5-6). Analysis of the calendar data of the record allows us to date it with complete accuracy: it was compiled on February 25, 1340.
The text of the entry contains a rich collection of quotes. The appearance in the Russian land (“in the desert lands”) of a righteous prince, who carries out judgment “not according to reward,” was allegedly foretold by the biblical prophet Ezekiel. In the Old Testament book, inscribed with the name of the named prophet and well known to ancient Russian readers in the ancient Slavic text “Explanatory Prophets”, the oldest list of which was copied in Novgorod back in 1047 by the priest Upir, we do not find exactly the words that we read in the recording ( a, 13-18). Probably, the scribes did not quote their source verbatim, for nevertheless, many passages were found in it that were similar to the record in meaning and style.
Next we read a precise and lengthy quotation from the famous monument of ancient Russian literature of the Kievan period - “The Words of Law and Grace” (a, 22-b, 1). Using the words of the named literary source, scribes compare the activities of Ivan Kalita as an educator of Moscow with his predecessors - the apostles, educators of ancient Rome, Asia, India and Hierapolis. This passage from the “Sermon on Law and Grace” was repeatedly quoted by Russian and South Slavic authors in the 13th-15th centuries. The quote in the above entry most accurately conveys the source. In turn, in the works of later Moscow writing, the same text is quoted not according to the source, but according to the entry in the “Siysky Gospel”. Thus, the recording can be considered as a kind of focus, refracting the ray of the previous era and transmitting its reflection to the future.
However, the authors of “Praise...” were not satisfied with just a quote from an 11th century monument. They boldly combine the tradition coming from Hilarion of Kyiv with other traditional lines going back to the “Tale of Bygone Years” and to the legends that lived in the family of princes from the descendants of Vladimir Monomakh. This is a reminiscence of the legend about the visit to the Russian land by the Apostle Andrew the First-Called (b, 1-3). Further, Ivan Kalita is compared with Emperor Constantine, the founder of Constantinople (b, 9-10), with the Byzantine emperor, legislator Justinian (b, 25), with the famous Byzantine monarch Manuel Komnenos (c, 16-22).
Everything noted proves the good knowledge of the authors of the recording in ancient Slavic-Russian translated literature. They undoubtedly know the translated Byzantine chronicles (George Amartol, John Malala, Nicephorus, Manasseh), which speak about the named figures of world history. Melenty and Prokosha also showed their knowledge of such translated works as “The Legend of the Indian Kingdom,” where Emperor Manuel acts as a co-questioner of the legendary “Tsar and Priest John,” the pious ruler of the Indian land. This story of Serbian origin came to Rus' no later than the beginning of the 13th century. and was reflected in the “Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land,” which speaks of Emperor Manuel’s fear of the ancestor of Prince Ivan, Vladimir Monomakh. There is reason to believe that the authors of the record relied not only on translated books, but also on oral legends, in which the name of Tsar Manuel was intertwined with the names of the Russian princes Vladimir Monomakh and Andrei Bogolyubsky.
If, in terms of literary erudition, Melenty and Prokosha showed themselves to be followers and continuers of the stylistic traditions of Kievan Rus, then individual observations of the written language allow us to discern in it phenomena characteristic of the subsequent period in the development of Moscow writing in the 14th-16th centuries. For example: akanye at the beginning of a word abandoned(a, 14), as well as writing Grand Duke(b, 16) with inflection -oi vm. -th, which also brings our monument closer to the Moscow dialect of subsequent times.
Noteworthy in the recording is the adherence of the scribes in some cases to the norms of Central Bulgarian spelling. This concerns the transmission of the letters i and iA through the letter b. Let us note, for example, divine scriptures(b. 20), any And hold(gerund-in, 20-21), remember(same-g. 8). Such linguistic features are generally considered to be a manifestation of the second South Slavic influence on Russian writing, which, however, arose later, from the end of the 14th century.
Let us also note a peculiar grammatical turn with the paratactic connection of nouns: by command of the slave bim(a, 10). Such paratactic combinations are common in Russian written and oral language starting from the 15th century.
Finally, the originality of the syntactic structure in “Praise...” is characterized by a conglomeration of independent participial phrases and independent dative phrases, not related in meaning to the subject (for example, in 1-15). Similar phenomena of syntactic stylistics will become frequent in the monuments of the 15th-16th centuries, especially in panegyric hagiographic literature.
So, an analysis of the language of the earliest monument of Moscow literature allows us to draw two main conclusions: this literature is inextricably linked with the stylistic traditions of the Kyiv era, it early develops stylistic features characteristic of its later development in the 15th-16th centuries.
The formation of a centralized state around Moscow puts an end to the previously existing isolated numerous appanage principalities. This political and economic unification of the previously disparate Russian lands inevitably entailed the development and enrichment of various forms of business correspondence.
If during the period of feudal fragmentation the appanage prince, whose possessions sometimes did not extend beyond one settlement or the course of some provincial river, could see all his subjects every day and verbally convey to them the necessary orders, now, when the possessions of the Moscow state began to extend from the banks The Baltic to the confluence of the Oka and the Volga and from the Arctic Ocean to the upper reaches of the Don and Dnieper, orderly correspondence became necessary to govern such a vast territory. And this required the involvement of a large number of people for whom literacy and writing business papers became their profession.
In the first decades of the existence of the Moscow Principality, the responsibilities of scribes continued to be handled by church ministers - deacons, clerks and their assistants - clerks. So, under the Spiritual Certificate of Ivan Kalita we read the signature: “and the letter is the psal of the clerk of the great prince of Kostroma.” The authors of “Praise...” Melenty and Prokosha were clerks. However, writing soon ceased to be a privilege of the clergy and scribes began to be recruited from secular people. But due to the inertia of the language, the term by which these officials of the Moscow state, secular in origin and way of life, designated themselves, was preserved. In words clerk, clerk continued to call the scribes of the grand ducal and local offices, who soon received the name orders. Affairs in these institutions were carried out by order clerks, who developed a special “order syllable” that was close to the colloquial speech of the common people, but also contained certain traditional formulas and phrases.
An integral part of the order syllable has become such words and expressions as petition, beat with one's forehead(to ask for something). It has become generally accepted that the petitioner, at the beginning of the petition, list all the numerous titles and titles of the high-ranking person to whom he addressed the request, and be sure to name the full name and patronymic of this person. On the contrary, the petitioner had to invariably write about himself only in a derogatory form, without adding a patronymic to his name and adding to it such designations of real or imaginary dependence as slave, slave, serf.
During this historical period, the word became especially popular diploma in the meaning of business paper, document (although this word, borrowed from the Greek language in the initial period of Slavic writing, previously had such a meaning). Complex terms appear in which the noun is defined by adjectives: spiritual literacy(will), negotiable letter, folding letter, assigned letter, allotment letter(which established the boundaries of land grants), etc. Not limiting itself to the genre of letters, business writing develops such forms as judicial records and interrogatory records.
By the XV-XVI centuries. This includes the compilation of new sets of judicial decisions, for example, the Code of Laws of Ivan III (1497), the Pskov Judicial Charter (1462-1476), in which, based on the articles of Russkaya Pravda, the further development of legal norms was recorded. Terms reflecting new social relations appear in business writing (younger brother, older brother, boyar children), new monetary relations that developed during the Moscow period (bondage, money etc.). We can recognize derivative terms such as business people, bonded people etc. The development of abundant social terminology, brought to life by the complication of socio-economic relations, is associated with the direct impact of the colloquial speech element on the literary and written language.
B. A. Larin, considering the question of how much the language of business monuments of the 15th-17th centuries can be considered. a direct reflection of the spoken language of that era, came to a negative conclusion. In his opinion, which is fully shared by us, despite the relatively close proximity of the language of monuments of this type to colloquial speech, even such of them as interrogative speeches experienced the continuous and powerful influence of the written orthographic tradition, dating back to the ancient Slavic writing X -XI centuries Not a single written source of Ancient Rus' in all periods of historical development could be free from such traditional influence.
The enrichment and increase in the number of forms of business writing indirectly influenced all genres of written speech and ultimately contributed to the overall progressive development of the literary and written language of Moscow Rus'. The same scribes, clerks and clerks, in their free time from working in the orders, took on the task of rewriting books, not only chronicles, but also theological and liturgical ones, while they involuntarily introduced into the texts the skills they acquired when drawing up business documents, which led to an ever-increasing diversity of literary and written language.
This language, on the one hand, was more and more imbued with the speech features of business writing, which was approaching the spoken language of the people, on the other hand, it was subjected to artificial archaization under the influence of the second South Slavic influence.
Here it is necessary to say in more detail specifically about the linguistic side of this historical and cultural process, which is very broad in its social causes and consequences, since its other aspects are revealed in more detail in the available scientific literature.
The first to draw attention to the linguistic aspect of the problem of the second South Slavic influence was Acad. A. I. Sobolevsky in the monograph “Translated Literature of Moscow Rus'” (M., 1903). Then these issues were dealt with by Academician. M. N. Speransky. During the Soviet period, the works of D. S. Likhachev were devoted to them." Yugoslav and Bulgarian researchers also pay attention to the development of the problem.
It can now be considered generally accepted that the process, usually designated as the second South Slavic influence on the Russian language and Russian literature, is closely connected with the ideological movements of the era, with the growing and strengthening relations of the then Muscovite Rus' with Byzantium and the South Slavic cultural world. This process should be considered as one of the stages in the general history of Russian-Slavic cultural relations.
First of all, it should be noted that the second South Slavic influence on Rus' must be compared with the first influence and at the same time opposed to it. The first South Slavic influence should be recognized as the influence of South Slavic culture on East Slavic culture, which took place at the very beginning of East Slavic writing, in the X-XI centuries, when the Old Slavic church book came to Rus' from Bulgaria.
The very formation of the Old Russian literary and written language is due to the influence of ancient South Slavic writing on the spoken language of the Eastern Slavs. However, by the end of the 14th century. this impact gradually fades away, and the written monuments of that time completely assimilated the ancient Slavic written element of folk-colloquial East Slavic speech.
During the heyday of the ancient Russian Kievan state, the South Slavic countries, in particular Bulgaria, were defeated and enslaved by the Byzantine Empire. With particular force, the Byzantines persecuted and destroyed at this time all traces of ancient Slavic writing on Bulgarian soil. Therefore, in the XII-early XIII century. the cultural influence of one branch of the Slavs on another went in the direction from Kievan Rus to the Balkans. This explains the penetration of many works of Old Russian writing to the Bulgarians and Serbs precisely in this era. As M. N. Speransky noted, not only such monuments of literature of Kievan Rus as “The Word of Law and Grace” or “The Life of Boris and Gleb”, but also translated works - “The History of the Jewish War” or “The Tale of Akira the Wise” - in the mentioned period they came from Kievan Rus to the Bulgarians and Serbs, who used the cultural assistance of Rus' during their liberation from Byzantine dependence at the beginning of the 13th century.
In the middle of the 13th century. the situation changes again. The Russian land is experiencing a brutal Tatar-Mongol invasion, which was accompanied by the destruction of many cultural values and caused a general decline in art and writing.
By the end of the 12th century. The Bulgarians, and then the Serbs, manage to achieve state independence from the Byzantine Empire, conquered in 1204 by the crusaders (Western European knights). Around the middle of the 13th century. The secondary flowering of culture and literature in Bulgaria begins - the “Silver Age” of Bulgarian writing (in contrast to the first period of its heyday in the 10th century, called the “Golden Age”). The “Silver Age” dates back to the renewal of old translations from Greek and the appearance of many new translated works, and predominantly works of ascetic and mystical content were borrowed, which is associated with the spread of the hesychast movement (silent monks). The literary language is undergoing serious reform, in which new strict spelling and stylistic norms are being established.
The spelling reform of the Bulgarian language is usually associated with the activities of the literary school of Patriarch Euthymius in the then capital of the Central Bulgarian Kingdom - Tarnovo. The heyday of the Tarnovo school was about 25 years, from 1371 to 1396, until the conquest and enslavement of Bulgaria by the Ottoman Turks.
In parallel, in the XIII-XIV centuries. Slavic culture and literature begins to develop in Serbia. The Slavic revival in the Balkans at this time took place, as in the 11th-12th centuries, under the influence of Rus'.
By the end of the 14th century, when Rus' began to recover from the Tatar-Mongol pogrom and when a single centralized state was emerging around Moscow, there was a need for cultural figures among Russians. And here the natives of the Slavic South - Bulgarians and Serbs - come to the rescue. Metropolitan Cyprian, who headed at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, came from Bulgaria. Russian church. Cyprian was closely associated with the Tarnovo literary school and, perhaps, was even a relative of the Bulgarian Patriarch Euthymius. At the initiative of Cyprian, a correction of church liturgical books was undertaken in Rus' according to the norms of Central Bulgarian spelling and morphology. The successor of Cyprian's work was his nephew, also a Bulgarian by birth, Gregory Tsamblak, who held the post of Metropolitan of Kyiv. He was a prolific writer and preacher who widely disseminated the ideas of the Tarnovo literary school. Later, in the middle and at the end of the 15th century, the author of numerous hagiographic works, Pachomius Logofet (Serb by birth and nickname: Pachomius the Serb), worked in Novgorod and then in Moscow. Other cultural figures can also be named who found refuge in Rus' in these centuries, fleeing from the Turkish conquerors of Bulgaria and other South Slavic lands.
However, the second South Slavic influence cannot be reduced only to the activities of immigrants from Bulgaria and Serbia. This influence was a very deep and wide socio-cultural phenomenon. This includes the penetration of the ideas of monastic silence into Rus', the impact of Byzantine and Balkan art on the development of Russian architecture and icon painting (remember the work of the artists Theophan the Greek and Andrei Rublev) and, finally, the development of translated and original literature and writing. In order for this progressive, progressive process to be widely manifested in all areas of culture, internal conditions were also necessary, which consisted in the development of the then Russian society.
Obviously, in the then Moscow Rus', the ruling classes and ideologists of the autocratic system that was emerging in those years sought to elevate everything connected with its authority above ordinary earthly ideas. Hence the desire to make the official literary and written language as different as possible from everyday colloquial speech, to contrast it with it. It was also important that the church at that time had to fight many anti-feudal ideological movements that acted in the form of Heresies (Strigolnikov, etc.), and these latter relied on the support of the people, were closer to both popular culture and popular speech.
The mutual connection between the autocratic state and the Orthodox Church led to the creation of the idea of Moscow as the head and center of all Orthodoxy, of Moscow as the New Jerusalem and the Third Rome. This idea, which manifested itself simultaneously with the Second South Slavic influence, contributed to the establishment of Moscow absolutism and served as a brake on the development of the national language, alienating its official variety from the vernacular.
However, at the same time, the second South Slavic influence was not without positive aspects, enriching the vocabulary and stylistics of the language in its high styles and strengthening the ties of Muscovite Rus' with the South Slavic lands.
When studying historical and linguistic issues; associated with the second South Slavic influence, it is necessary to proceed from a detailed comparison of Russian written monuments of the late XIV-XV centuries. with South Slavic lists of them, brought to Rus' from Bulgaria and Serbia in these centuries. Let us therefore turn to such aspects of written monuments as paleography, spelling, language and style.
Significant changes occur at the end of the 14th century. in Russian paleography. In the XI-XIII centuries. the only form of writing was the charter, with its distinct, free-standing, large letters. In the first half of the 14th century. Along with this, the senior semi-ustav appears, a letter that is simpler, but closer to the charter. By the end of the 14th century. the older semi-ustav is replaced by a younger one, similar in style to fluent italics. The nature of the external design of manuscripts is changing. In the Kievan era, “animal (teratological)” ornament dominated, from the end of the 14th century. it disappears and a floral or geometric ornament appears in its place. Gold and silver begin to predominate in manuscript miniatures. A ligature appears - a complex continuous writing of letters and words, which is ornamental in nature. Such a characteristic detail in the design of manuscripts appears as a “funnel,” that is, a gradual narrowing of the lines towards the end of the manuscript, ending with a spare, sharp drawing. Letter styles change e, y, b (s), the letter “zelo” appears, which previously only denoted the number 6. All this makes it possible at first glance to distinguish the manuscript that underwent the second South Slavic influence from the lists of the previous period.
A peculiar spelling fashion emerges. During this period, the letter “big yus” was again introduced into active use, already from the 12th century. completely crowded out of Russian written monuments. Since there were no nasal vowels in living Russian pronunciation for a long time, this letter began to be used not only in those words where it was etymologically justified, for example, in the word pVka, but also in words dVsha, where it replaced the etymologically correct spelling OU In the XIV-XV centuries. the use of the letter “big yus” can be considered as a purely external imitation of the established Bulgarian spelling fashion. Under the influence of the Bulgarian letter, the spelling of the vowel I without iotation appears, in the form A after vowels: moa(vm. mine), yours, salvation etc. This spelling penetrates the title of the Moscow sovereign - all of Rus', - where it remained until the 17th century.
Under the influence of Central Bulgarian spelling, the style of reduced consonants after smooth consonants was established in accordance with their common Slavic syllabic character, although such pronunciation never took place in the Russian language (for example: vlk, vrkh, right, right etc.), which is widely reflected in the spelling of such a monument as “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” There is a tendency towards spelling convergence with the original Greek borrowings. So the word angel(Greek)a\ggeloj), written in the Kievan era in accordance with Russian pronunciation - angel, now written in Greek with a “double scale”: angel. At the same time, the scribes came up with a rationale for the graphic differences: the word written under the title denoted the actual angel, the spirit of good, while the word without the title was pronounced as written, aggel and was understood as a designation of the spirit of evil, the demon: “to the devil and his angel.”
Probably, the period of the second South Slavic influence can be attributed to the assimilation by the Russian literary language of some Church Slavonicisms, previously used mainly in the East Slavic vowel. According to A. A. Shakhmatov, the word pln, actually written up until 1917 with the letter “yat” at the root, unlike other Old Church Slavonicisms with combinations pb, l in the root, who early changed the root vowel in Russian pronunciation and writing b on e(For example, tribe, time, burden etc.), retained “yat” because, having supplanted the East Slavic parallel full, established itself in the Russian literary language only in the XIV-XV centuries.
At the same time, the introduction of words with a combination of consonants into the Russian vocabulary begins railway(from the original dj). This combination of sounds was certainly impossible for the Russian language before the fall of the weak reduced ones and therefore was not present in the most ancient Old Slavonicisms, for example, formerly, clothes, hope etc. Modern hope, clothing, leader, birth, walking and others are obliged to the era of the second South Slavic influence. However, such words were finally established in the Russian language (and in the Church Slavonic translation of the Russian language) only in the 17th century. after Nikon's reform.
During the period of the second South Slavic influence, peculiar lexical doublets appeared, developing from an initially single word. So, Old Slavonic and Old Russian collection(assembly) with the fall of the weak reduced ones turned into a word collection, which has specific and everyday meanings these days, the pronunciation of the same word while retaining the vowel after With created the word in the prefix cathedral, which has narrow church meanings and uses: 1) the main, large church or 2) a meeting of respected (clergy) persons.
During the period of the second South Slavic influence, there was a massive correction of older Russian manuscript texts. Inspectors persistently strive to correct the Russianisms they noticed, which were perceived as a deviation from the generally accepted norm, and replace them with parallel Old Church Slavonic formations. Thus, according to our observations, in the manuscript from the former collection of Undolsky No. 1 (now in the GBL), dating back to the 15th century, the text of the Old Russian translation of the biblical book “Esther” (chapter II, art. 6) has the following form. Original text: “A man of Judah was in the city of Susan, his name was Mardachai... and he came from Jerusalem with his captivity... like the captive Nechadnezzar, the king of Babylon.” The director carefully crosses out the letters o in words. full, Nolonom, full and puts it at the top, after the letter l- the letter b, turning these words into captivity, captivity, stumps.
Similar operations can be observed in manuscripts containing the text of “Russian Truth” and other monuments of the Kyiv era. Obviously, a similar fate befell the text of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” in which, as we could see earlier (see Chapter 6), many Old Slavonicisms owe their appearance to the era of the second South Slavic influence.
According to calculations made in the book by G. O. Vinokur, the ratio of partial-vocal vocabulary to full-vocal vocabulary in the monuments of the 14th century. (before the second South Slavic influence) is 4:1; in the monuments of the 16th century. this ratio changes towards increasing nonvocal combinations - 10:1. But still, it was not possible to completely eradicate the East Slavic vocabulary in phonetic design during this period.
The second South Slavic influence had a strong impact on the stylistic system of the literary language of that time, which was expressed in the creation of a special stylistic manner of “decorated syllable”, or “weaving of words”. This manner, which has become especially widespread in the monuments of official church and state literature, in lives, in rhetorical words and narratives, is characterized by repetition and piling up of cognate formations, syntactic and semantic parallelism. At this time, there was also an emphasized desire to create complex words from two, three or more stems, used as decorative epithets. However, one should not exaggerate the degree of the actual South Slavic influence on the style of the Russian literary language of this period. Some examples given in D. S. Likhachev’s book as examples of the “decorated style” of the period of the second South Slavic influence, in fact, turn out to go back to the ancient texts of the psalter or other biblical books translated back to the Cyril and Methodius era.
To illustrate the stylistic phenomena that were mentioned here, we present an excerpt from the “Trinity Chronicle” floor 1404: “In 6912, indictment 12, Grand Duke Vasily Dmitreevich conceived a chapel and placed it in his courtyard behind the church for the honor of the Annunciation. This clock-keeper will be called the hour: every hour, striking the bell with a hammer, softening and calculating the hours of the night and day. Not like a human strike, but human-like, self-resonant and self-moving, strangely somehow created by human cunning, pre-imagined and subtly crafted. The master and artist of this were some monks who came from the Holy Mountain, a Serbian family named Lazar. The price for this was greater than one and a half hundred rubles.”
In the above passage, the pompous, decorated syllable of “weaving words” is reflected in the accumulation of epithets that determine the action of the miraculous chapel. Let's pay attention to such complex words as hourly, human-like, self-resonant and self-moving, strange, dreamy and ingenious. And then there are the everyday Russianisms: hitting the bell with a hammer, half a hundred rubles.
This text can be considered typical for its era. In it one can see both the strength of the second South Slavic influence - it enriched the stylistic system of the literary language, and its weak side - excessive ornateness. But the influence did not touch the original foundations of our literary and written language, which developed in this era primarily according to its own internal laws.
The linguistic situation in the Moscow state in the 16th-17th centuries. usually presented to researchers in the form of bilingualism. The reasons for such a sharp divergence between different types or genre-stylistic varieties of the literary-written language should be recognized, on the one hand, as the second South Slavic influence on the official form of the literary-written language and, simultaneously with it, the strengthening of folk-colloquial elements in the developing and enriched business writing language; on the other hand, different rates of development of individual types and varieties of literary and written language. Its official, book-Slavic variety was artificially delayed in its development, not only continuing to preserve outdated forms and words, but also often returning to the norms of the ancient Slavic period. The language of business writing, which was closer to colloquial speech, quickly and more consistently reflected all the phonetic and grammatical changes that took place in it. As a result, by the 16th century. the differences between the Church Slavonic (church book) and folk literary type of language were felt not so much in the form of vocabulary, but in the area of grammatical forms.
For example, while in the colloquial form of the language and, in accordance with this, in the language of business writing by the 16th century. a system of aspectual-tense forms of the verb close to the modern one was established and consolidated; in the book-Slavic form of the literary-written language, according to tradition, they continued to use the old aspectual system and the deadened forms of the imperfect, aorist and plusquaperfect, although not always with the proper consistency and accuracy.
The first researcher to notice Moscow bilingualism was the famous author of “Russian Grammar”, published in 1696 in Oxford, G. Ludolf. He wrote then: “For Russians, knowledge of the Slavic language is necessary because not only St. The Bible and other books used for worship exist only in the Slavic language, but it is impossible to write or discuss any issues of science and education without using the Slavic language. Therefore, the more learned someone wants to seem, the more he uses Slavic expressions in their speech or in their writings, although some laugh at those who abuse the Slavic language in ordinary speech.”
Thus, having in mind the end of the 17th century, Ludolf directly speaks of bilingualism in the Muscovite state. In his opinion, in order to live in Muscovy, it is necessary to know two languages, because Muscovites speak Russian and write in Slavic.
However, if the position on bilingualism seemed so definite by the end of the 17th century, then a century or a century and a half earlier, in the 16th century, it was not yet so clearly expressed. In addition, one should not lose sight of the fact that Ludolf, as a foreigner, as an observer of the picture of language from the outside, could have imagined many things differently than a modern researcher who approaches the study of this issue primarily on the basis of a study of written monuments.
From our point of view, there was no genuine bilingualism, in which translation from one language to another is necessary, in the Muscovite state of the 16th century. still it wasn't. In this case, it is better to talk about stylistic varieties of essentially the same literary and written language that diverge greatly from each other. If in the Kievan period, in our opinion, it is advisable to distinguish three main genre-stylistic varieties of the literary and written language: church book, business and actual literary (or folk-literary), then the Moscow period, and the 16th century. in particular, it has only two varieties - church book and business - since the intermediate, folk-literary variety by this time had dissolved in two extreme varieties of literary and written language.
to that in the 15th century. we are dealing precisely with two divergent stylistic varieties of the same literary language, and not with two different languages, as was the case, for example, in the medieval Czech Republic or Poland under the dominance of official Latin, which is proved, in our opinion, by the fact that the same authors within the same work had the opportunity to freely move from one form of literary presentation to another, depending on the micro-context, on the content, theme and purpose of not the entire work, but specifically a given segment of it.
The stated position can be proven by analysis of the text. Let us turn, for example, to the “Messages and Letters” of Ivan the Terrible. His message to Prince Andrei Kurbsky, which the addressee quite rightly assessed as “broadcast and noisy,” is replete with theological reasoning about the divine pre-establishment of the tsarist autocratic power, full of Church Slavonic quotations from biblical, liturgical and chronicle sources and therefore, naturally, oversaturated with Slavicisms and archaisms However, in the same work, as soon as it comes to the grievances Ivan experienced from the boyars, the tone changes sharply. Touched to the quick, the author does not skimp on vernacular language and boldly moves on to colloquial grammatical forms of the past tense in -l. Here are the words, for example, that express Ivan the Terrible’s memories of his joyless childhood: “I’ll just remember: we were playing in our youth, and Prince Ivan Vasilyevich Shuisky was sitting on a bench, leaning on his elbow, with his leg resting on our father on the bed; not bowing down to us, not only as a parent, but as a master, as if the slavish principle had been found below.”
And here are the words in the same work that Ivan the Terrible stigmatizes the betrayal of his political opponent: “And you forgot everything, you transgressed the kiss of the cross with the treacherous custom of a dog, you united yourself with the Christian enemies.” Objecting to Kurbsky, he writes: “And the hedgehogs of their governors were dissolved by various deaths, but with God’s help we have many governors and besides you, traitors. But I am free to pay my slaves, but I am free to execute them.”
The above excerpts sufficiently clearly characterize the internal inconsistency of the stylistic system of the “Epistle” of Ivan the Terrible, of course, a bright and talented master of style, whimsically combining Church Slavonicisms and colloquial elements of speech, signs of bookishness and business writing.
It is no coincidence, in our opinion, that this characteristic stylistic system received such a sharp rebuke in Kurbsky’s response message, who accused his ideological opponent of violating the stylistic norms of that time. A. Kurbsky wrote in his “Brief Answer”: “Your writing was accepted... even though it was regurgitated out of uncontrollable anger with poisonous words, not only by the princess... but this was not worthy for a simple, wretched warrior; and most of all, so many sacred words are enough, and those with much rage and cruelty, neither lines, nor verses, as if by skillful and learned customs...; but beyond measure, excessively and loudly, with whole books, and whole parables” and messages... Then about beds, about padded jackets, other countless, truly, supposedly frantic women’s fables...”
The language of another work of the same era, Domostroi, is no less typical of its time. The author of this book, the famous Moscow archpriest Sylvester, close to Ivan the Terrible in the first years of his reign, also proved himself to be an extraordinary stylist, fluent in both varieties of the literary and written language of his time. In the first part of the book (up to Chapter 20 inclusive), the bookish, Church Slavonic speech element clearly predominates. And this is understandable, since the initial chapters of the book deal with ideological and moral problems. There are often lengthy quotations from biblical books here, in particular the entire chapter twenty, according to the Konshinsky list of works, is nothing more than a verbatim “Praise to Wives.” from the biblical book “The Proverbs of Solomon” (chapter 31, vv. 10-31).
Here is an excerpt from Chap. 17 “How to teach children and save them through fear”: “Execute your son from his youth, and he will rest in your old age and give you the beauty of your soul. And do not weaken when beating a child: even if you hit him with a rod he will not die, but he will be healthier; You beat him in the body, and deliver his soul from death.” The vocabulary and syntax here are quite indicative, fully corresponding to the norms of Church Slavonic usage.
In complete contrast to this, in Chap. 38 (“How to organize a hut house well and cleanly”) Russian everyday vocabulary predominates, and the syntax of this chapter is distinguished by its closeness to colloquial, and partly to folk-poetic speech: “The table and dishes, and staves, and loshki, and all sorts of courts, and ladles and brothers, warm the water early in the morning, wash, wipe, and dry; and after lunch the same, and in the evening. And buckets, and bowls, and kneading bowls, and troughs, and sieves, and sieves, and pots, and jugs, and pots - always wash, and scrape, and wipe, and dry, and put in a clean place where it will be handy to be; Every court and every order would always be washed and clean; and the courts would not be dragging around the shop and the yard and the mansions, and the captains, and dishes, and brothers, and ladles, and pots would not be lying around the shop; where it is arranged to be, in a clean place one would lie overturned; and in any case, food or drink, and that would be covered for the sake of cleanliness.” Here, in addition to a detailed listing of realities, what is striking is the polyunion in the syntactic construction of the phrase, which is also observed in oral poetic creativity.
Let us turn to the stylistic analysis of some literary monuments of the 16th century, introduced into scientific use over the past decades.
For example, “The Word is Different,” published by Yu. K. Begunov. This work shows episodes of the social struggle that flared up in the Moscow state in the first years of the 16th century. in connection with the planned alienation of church and monastic land holdings in favor of the Grand Duke. The monument is ecclesiastical in content and form. Its author strives to express his thoughts and feelings in pure and correct Church Slavonic language, but he does not always succeed.
In the first part of “Another Word” we find characteristic dialogues between representatives of the highest hierarchy, who, apparently, in their everyday conversations sought to speak in Church Slavonic. Here is a sample of these remarks: “Metropolitan also said to Genady, Archbishop of Novgorod: “Why don’t you say anything against the Grand Duke? With us you are so talkative. Nowadays you don’t say anything?” Genady answered: “You are saying, because I was robbed already before this.” In these remarks, despite the solemn biblical tone, hidden irony shines through.
For the morphological side of the text, the confusion of grammatical forms is indicative: “Prince Georgy is nothing about these verbs.” The narrator used the 1st person singular form. the aorist number in agreement with the subject expressed by the proper noun, and according to the norms of an earlier time the 3rd person form would have been expected.
But in the second part of the text, the author moves on to the story of a clash between the monks of the Trinity Monastery and the officials of the Grand Duke on the land boundary. Here the influence of the language of business documents of that time on the style of storytelling is clearly felt. The author of “Another Word” writes: “In the middle of these there is a volost called Ilemna, and some people for evil sake, living near that volost, spoke to the Grand Duke, saying: “Conan the monk has overthrown the earth boundary and slaughtered your land, the Grand Duke.” The great prince soon ordered the rabble to be presented to his court. Testing the rabble a little, he sent him to the market and ordered him to beat him with a whip.”
What follows is a conversation between the monastery cellarer Vasyan and the grand ducal weekly officials. It is characteristic that a phrase is put into the mouths of secular weekly workers, indicating that they are well read in the biblical Old Testament texts. They refuse to take money from the monastery, “saying: "Not Let us stretch out our hands to the silver of the Sergius Monastery, so that we may not accept God’s leprosy.” This refers to an episode from the biblical “4th Book of Kings” (chap. 5-6), where the servant and disciple of the prophet Elisha, Gehazi, contrary to the prohibition of his mentor , took a bribe from the prophet who was healed of leprosy, and as punishment for this, the leprosy of the healed man passed on to him.
The third, final part of the text of “Another Word” tells about the campaign of the elderly inhabitants of the Trinity Monastery to Moscow in order to beg the Grand Duke not to alienate the monastery lands. And that same night,” the author of “The Lay...” continues his narration, “the same day the elders moved from the monastery, a visitation from God came to the Grand Duke Autocrat.” But here the high style of the narrative is not maintained, and the message about the illness that befell the Grand Duke is conveyed in the form of obvious vernacular: “it took away his arm and leg and eye.”
The ending of the story is again emphatically solemn, expressed in rhetorical Church Slavonic style: “the abbot and his brothers, like some warriors of the knights, returned from battle, giving glory to God, who humbled the great prince of the autocrat.”
The second work among the recently discovered and introduced into scientific use is the ancient Russian “Tale about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich and the merchant Khariton Beloulin” (the title was given to this work by its first publisher, D. N. Alshits).
The story tells about the executions carried out by Ivan the Terrible in Moscow, “at the Fire,” in the summer of 7082 (i.e. 1574). The unknown author, narrating about contemporary events, strives to maintain a solemn, upbeat tone of the narrative, describing the courage of the national hero who dared to raise his voice against the cruelties of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. However, the solemn Church Slavonic speech element is now and then interrupted by folk-poetic reminiscences, going back to the fairy-tale and epic genre: we are talking about three hundred scaffolds, three hundred axes - “and three hundred executioners standing at the scaffolds.”
The beginning of book printing in Moscow was of significant importance for the development of the literary and written language. Printing in Russia was introduced in the middle of the 16th century, more than a century later than in Western European countries. Before this, the first examples of Church Slavonic printed books were published outside the then Moscow state, in Poland. From the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 16th centuries. In Krakow, the printing house of Schweipolt Feol operated, printing liturgical books in Church Slavonic for Western Rus', as well as for the Balkan countries, which were then already under Turkish rule.
In the first years of the 16th century, attempts were made to establish the printing of Slavic liturgical books in Novgorod. To this end, Novgorod Archbishop Gennady negotiated with the German printer from the city of Lübeck, Bartholomew Gotan. However, the negotiations ended without results. Scribes constantly introduced errors and distortions into the liturgical books copied by hand, which diverted the liturgical texts far from their originals. Maxim the Greek (Trivolis), who was summoned around 1518, drew attention to this in his translation and literary activities. to Moscow by order of Grand Duke Vasily III for the purpose of correcting and verifying translations of liturgical books with the originals. Later, in 1551, the same thing was discussed at the Stoglavy Church Council in Moscow in the presence of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The Council passed a resolution on the need to “stick to good translations” when rewriting books, but a special decision on the introduction of printing was not made.
In connection with the need to correct and unify church books, on the initiative of Moscow Metropolitan Macarius, the first printing house, as it was then called, the Printing House, was founded in Moscow around 1553 with the support of Ivan the Terrible. The annexation of the regions of the Middle and Lower Volga region, populated mainly by peoples only recently converted to Orthodoxy, to the Moscow state, made the need for such corrected books even more tangible.
The printing house was then located in Kitai-Gorod on Nikolskaya Street (now 25 October Street). In the first decades of its existence, Russian printing developed under the influence of Italian and South Slavic printing art. This is evidenced, by the way, by the printing terminology still used today, which contains many borrowings from the Italian language, for example: teredor man printer (Italian: tiratore), warrior type painter (Italian attitore), marzan page (Italian margina), pants printing press (Italian stampa), etc. Analysis of the decorative design of Russian printed texts - miniatures, headpieces, initials - also speaks of the Italian (or South Slavic) influence on the fine art of our pioneer printers.
The first Russian (Church Slavonic) printed books were undated editions from the 1550s. Among them are the most important liturgical books: the “Lenten Triodion”, containing services for Lent, four different “Psalms”, according to which daily services were corrected, one “Gospel”, and the “Colored Triodion”, which included services for Easter days. All these books have no imprint. Finally, in March 1564, the first dated book of the Slavic press, “The Apostle,” was published in Moscow by the reference officers (editors and printers) of the Printing House, Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets, which marked the true beginning of Russian printing. The following year, 1565, Ivan Fedorov published two editions of the liturgical book “Book of Hours” with imprint information. After Fedorov and Mstislavets left for Lithuania, their work was continued by reference workers Nikifor Tarasiev and Andronik Timofeev Nevezha, who published the “Psalter” in 1568. After this, work at the Moscow Printing Yard came to a standstill. The printing of books was transferred to the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, the then residence of the Oprichnina court of Ivan the Terrible, where in 1577 another edition of the “Psalter” was prepared and published, after which the work of the Printing Court stopped completely and was resumed in Moscow only in 1587.
The work of Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets on organizing the text in preparation for the publication of “The Apostle” is covered in detail in the article by G. I. Kolyada. As this researcher showed, the investigators studied in detail all the lists of the ancient Slavic “Apostle” that were at their disposal at that time and carefully verified all the discrepancies found in them, giving preference to the textual version that most satisfied them both in language and in meaning.
At the same time, obsolete and obscure words were consistently replaced with more well-known and common ones. Yes, word climates(Greek loan) was replaced by the word limits or countries, word makelia, also borrowed from Greek, was replaced by Slavic marketplace Instead of the expression used in the handwritten “Apostles,” “keep guard from dogs, guard from evil workers,” it was printed, as in subsequent editions of the same book, “keep guard from dogs, guard from evil workers.” This replacement is explained by the fact that by the 16th century. verb watch over loses one of the ancient, once characteristic meanings of beware, beware, and acquires literally the opposite semantic connotation. Verb forms experienced a similar semantic change drive, drive, which have received a new meaning pursue. Therefore the expression strange-loving, racing was replaced by the combination holding on to strangeness. Likewise, noun womb in the meaning of mercy is replaced in the text of the printed “Apostle” by the word mercy, and the expression “I will give you Thevia, our sister” (from the Greek Suni/sthmi meaning recommend) is changed to the expression “I entrust to you Thephia, your sister.” . .Very often, semantic and textual editing consisted of mutual replacement of personal and possessive pronouns (us, you, our, yours) in more precise accordance with the meaning of the context.
As a comparison with the dictionary manuals discussed in the book by L. S. Kovtun shows, the source of language editing of the “Apostle” in the preparation of its printed edition could be the so-called “arbitrary” dictionaries, created on Russian and South Slavic soil to take into account discrepancies in handwritten texts church liturgical books. Verification of the text and the establishment of a “good translation” of printed books contributed to the creation of uniform norms of the official written and literary language, since the text of corrected printed books V Subsequently, local scribes followed suit, imitating both the language and the technique of graphic reproduction of books from the Moscow authoritative publications approved by the Tsar himself.
The publishing industry and the introduction of printing are associated with the developments that began in the second half of the 16th century. work on the lexical and grammatical codification of the official Church Slavonic variety of the written and literary language. True, such works initially appear not in the Moscow state, but in that part of the former East Slavic lands that by the 16th century. came under the rule of the Polish-Lithuanian state,
Around 1566, Ivan Fedorov, together with his faithful assistant Peter Mstislavets, left Moscow and headed to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Research shows that Ivan Fedorov’s departure from Moscow should not be regarded as a forced flight. Obviously, he was sent abroad by the then Moscow government in order to support the Orthodox party in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was fighting for rapprochement with Moscow and needed help in establishing a printing business. This is what Ivan Fedorov began to diligently do immediately after his move across the border, first in Vilna, then in Zabludov, then in Lvov and, finally, in Ostrog, where the most noticeable center of Slavic education was then created.
Abroad, Ivan Fedorov published his first grammatical work. True, this book has a very modest title - “Primer”, but in fact it is much broader than a manual for basic literacy training, and can safely be considered as the first truly scientific printed work on Slavic grammar. This book (Lvov, 1574) also contains a unique anthology of the most common texts in Church Slavonic. The book, published by Ivan Fedorov, served as the best teaching aid for Western Russian youth who wanted to consolidate their knowledge and skills in their native language.
In the Western Russian lands, which then belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, other grammatical and lexigraphic works appeared at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, which was due to the circumstances of the social struggle of that time. Natives of Western Rus' had to defend the right to their linguistic and cultural identity in fierce ideological disputes against the aspirations of the Polish lords and Catholic clergy to subjugate in all respects the population of the then Belarus and Ukraine.
One of the means for the final subjugation of Western Rus' to the Polish lords was the Union of Brest, which forced the Western Russian high clergy to recognize the supreme power of the Pope (1596). However, the popular masses did not recognize the forced union and continued to fight against the enslavers with even greater force. The struggle took place in all spheres of public life, one of its forms was the development of education in the Slavic language. The struggle was led by brotherhoods, educational mass organizations created in all major cities of Western Rus'. The brotherhoods opened schools and academies and published polemical literature in the Slavic language.
In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as in all Western European countries in the Middle Ages, the dominant language of culture and education was Latin, subjected to scholastic processing in relation to its grammatical structure and vocabulary. This was determined by the fact that the Latin language was studied not according to the monuments of ancient writing, but in complete isolation from them, as a kind of ideal abstract norm. The study was carried out using the question-and-answer (catechetical) method: what is grammar? what is a noun? how many cases are there? how many declinations are there? etc.
In order to fight enemies with their own weapons, it was necessary to bring the Church Slavonic language to the same level of grammatical processing as the Latin language had at that time. Therefore, Western Russian grammatical works of that time liken Church Slavonic grammar to Greek and Latin medieval grammar.
It is necessary to name the following grammatical works published in Western Rus' in the second half of the 16th century.
This is, firstly, “Slovenian Grammar”, published in the city of Vilna in 1586. This book sets out the traditional “Teaching about the eight parts of the word”, which dates back to the ancient Hellenistic tradition and is presented in manuscripts starting from the 12th century.
In 1596, the very year of the conclusion of the Union of Brest, the grammar “Adelfotis” was published in Lvov, published by the Lvov Brotherhood, in honor of which this book received its name (adelfotis means brotherhood in Greek). “Adelfotis” was the first manual for the comparative study of Slavic and Greek grammars. This work significantly expanded the linguistic horizons of Western Russian readers of that time. Somewhat earlier, in 1591, two books were published prepared by the Ukrainian monk Lavrentiy Zizaniy: “Lexis” (dictionary) and “Grammar”, which expanded the range of issues studied in comparison with the “Grammar” of 1586.
Finally, already at the beginning of the 17th century. the most complete and thorough work on Church Slavonic grammar appears. This can rightly be called the fundamental set of grammatical rules published by a native of Podolia, Meletiy Smotrytsky, under the title: “Grammar of the Slavic correct syntagma” (the first edition was published in the suburb of Vilno, the village of Evye in 1619). The book soon gained wide popularity, spreading in several editions and in manuscript copies throughout all Slavic Orthodox countries. The publication of M. Smotritsky determined the entire course of scientific study of Church Slavonic grammar for a period of more than one and a half centuries.
Starting from the second quarter of the 17th century, Kyiv became the main center of Western Russian education and culture. There are Orthodox schools here: Brotherhood (Kievo-Epiphany Brotherhood) and the school of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. A Slavic printing house was founded at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, publishing both liturgical books and polemical works written by defenders of Orthodoxy against Catholics and against supporters of the union (Uniates). In 1627, the famous “Slovenian Russian Lexicon and Interpretation of Names” by Pamva Berynda was published here. In this book, Church Slavonic vocabulary is explained in “simple speech,” that is, in colloquial Ukrainian. When necessary, the dictionary also provides a comparison of Church Slavonic words with their Greek, Latin and Hebrew equivalents.
Compared to the “Lexis” of Zizania, the “Lexicon” of Pamva Berynda is much wider in the composition of the vocabulary. To the dictionary. An index of proper personal names contained in the church “Saints” has been added, revealing the Greek, Hebrew and Latin meanings of these names.
In 1632, the Bratsk and Kiev-Pechersk schools united and, at the initiative of the then Metropolitan of Kyiv Peter Mohyla, were transformed into a collegium (from 1701 - an academy) - the first East Slavic higher educational institution, standing at the level of Western European universities and academies of that time. This Academy, which later received the name Mogilyanskaya (after its founder), includes in its plan the scientific study of the Church Slavonic language, along with Greek, Latin and Polish.
At the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, many Ukrainian and Russian figures of education and literature of the 17th century received higher education, for example, Simeon of Polotsk, Epiphany Slavinetsky, Dmitry Rostovsky, Stefan Yavorsky. This is where those “Helleno-Slavonic styles” of the Russian literary (scholarly Church Slavonic) language originated, which made themselves felt with particular force in the middle and second half of the 17th century.
The emergence of the scientific Kievan variety of the Church Slavonic language initially affected the development of the literary language in the Muscovite state only indirectly, since only isolated responses to the dictionary and grammatical normalization of the Church Slavonic language penetrated there, mainly in the form of handwritten copies from printed works published in Western Rus'. In the monuments of official Moscow literature of the first decades of the 17th century. The rhetorical “decorated syllable” continues to dominate as a type of “weaving words” style of the 15th-16th centuries. During the social unrest and foreign invasions that Muscovite Russia experienced in the first quarter of the century, there was, one can safely say, no time for literature and no time for enlightenment. Only in the 1630-1640s, when the Moscow state recovered from the shocks it had suffered and Moscow began to take care of publishing books, the question of correcting liturgical texts, which was repeatedly raised by both church and civil authorities in the 14th and 16th centuries, arose again. (activities of Metropolitan Cyprian, Maxim the Greek, Stoglavy Cathedral). In the middle of the 17th century. Kiev scientist Epiphany Slavinetsky was invited to Moscow to work as a reference for the Printing House, followed by his other compatriots.
In 1648, the third, revised edition of Meletiy Smotritsky’s “Grammar” was printed at the Printing Yard in Moscow, which formed the basis for the grammatical normalization of the official version of the Church Slavonic form of the literary and written language. This publication was published without the name of the author, but with an extensive theoretical preface attributed to the pen of a famous figure in the Moscow enlightenment of the early 16th century. Maxim the Greek. The revision affected many of the rules of Smotritsky’s “Grammar” (mainly the declension paradigm, bringing them closer to colloquial Great Russian speech, as well as the stress system, which in earlier editions of the grammar reflected the norms of Western Russian pronunciation.
A new stage in the development of the Russian national and literary-written language begins in the second half of the 14th century. and is associated with the formation of a centralized state around Moscow. Feudal fragmentation is replaced by a new unification of East Slavic lands in the northeast. This unification was the reason for the formation of the Great Russian nationality, which gradually included all speakers of the Russian language who were under the rule of the Tatar-Mongols. In parallel, in the XIII-XV centuries. those parts of the East Slavic population that managed to escape the Tatar-Mongol conquest (in the west) are part of the Lithuanian-Russian principality, on the territory of which the Western Russian nationality is formed, which soon split into the Belarusian (under the rule of Lithuania) and the Ukrainian (under the rule of Poland) nationalities. Thus, first feudal fragmentation, and then the Tatar-Mongol conquest and seizure of Western Russian lands by Lithuania and Poland become the reason for the division of the once united Old Russian (East Slavic) people into three East Slavic ones: Great Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian. The common historical fate of the three fraternal peoples determined the closest proximity between all three languages of the East Slavic peoples and at the same time ensured their independent, independent development.
Written literary language of all East Slavic branches in the XIV-XV centuries. continues to develop on the same general basis of the Old Russian language until the 17th century. remains unified, breaking up only into zonal variants.
In the process of formation of the Great Russian people and their language, Moscow plays a prominent role. From the 9th century The territory where the capital of our country is now located became a place of settlement for East Slavic tribes. As archaeological excavations show, representatives of two tribal associations have long come into contact in this territory: the northern and eastern parts were occupied by the Krivichi, the southern and western by the Vyatichi. Their burial mounds are included in the ring of modern “Greater Moscow”. Thus, from the very beginning of its development, the Moscow land became an area of inter-tribal communication.
In October 1947, the 800th anniversary of the city of Moscow was solemnly celebrated, but this date is conditional: under 1147 we read the first mention of the name of Moscow on the pages of written sources, namely the “Suzdal Chronicle”, where it is reported under the named year that Suzdal Prince Yuri Dolgoruky appointed a meeting with his ally, the Chernigov prince Svyatoslav Olgovich, “in Moscow,” which at that time was only a princely fortified castle near the border of the Suzdal land with the Chernigov land. This explains the choice of meeting place.
The city of Moscow grew and developed rapidly due to its favorable geographical position at the crossroads of two water trade routes from the southwest (from the Kyiv land) to the northeast (to the Middle Volga region) and from the northwest (from Novgorod) to the southeast (to lower reaches of the Oka and Volga).
This also contributed to the influx of population to Moscow from various East Slavic lands and the formation of a mixed dialect on its territory.
By the time of the Tatar-Mongol conquest, Moscow had become a rich commercial and industrial center, which recovered relatively quickly after its defeat by nomads in the winter of 1238. The period of Tatar rule also had a favorable impact on the growth of Moscow, since the Moscow princes were able to make the Tatar-Mongol khans an instrument of their unification politicians. By the end of the 13th century. The Moscow principality is allocated as an independent inheritance from the Vladimir-Suzdal principality. True, at first this principality was the smallest and most insignificant, falling into the possession of the youngest son of Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky, Daniil. His sons, Yuri and especially Ivan, nicknamed Kalita (wallet) for his frugality, did a lot to strengthen the power of Moscow. Ivan Kalita receives from the hands of the khans a label for the great reign of Vladimir. His descendants firmly hold the grand ducal power in their hands, and Moscow becomes an all-Russian center.
Since 1326, the then head of the Russian Church, Metropolitan Peter, has chosen Moscow as his residence. And this also contributed to the attraction of cultural forces and material resources to the church, which consecrated with its authority the power of the emerging centralized state.
Finally, in 1380, the victory won over the hordes of the Golden Horde temnik Mamai by Ivan Kalita’s grandson Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy, who led the united Russian forces, showed and proved to all Russian people the correctness of the policy of the Moscow princes.
The East Slavic population continued to concentrate around Moscow, fleeing from Tatar raids behind the dense forests that surrounded the city at that time. As an analysis of the oldest monuments of Moscow writing shows, at first the residents of Moscow used the dialect of the northeastern group, the Vladimir-Suzdal type. However, the further, the more one feels the influence on this initially Northern Russian dialect basis of the Southern Russian speech element, which is increasingly intensifying in the Moscow dialect.
An analysis of the language of early Moscow writing shows, as already noted, that initially the population of Moscow, at least within the boundaries of the princely court, adhered to the Northern Russian pronunciation. For example, in the Spiritual Charter of Ivan Kalita of 1327-1328. we find the following spellings: Ofonasey, Ostafyevo, etc. However, already in the entry with praise to Prince Ivan Kalita on the “Siya Gospel” of 1340, one can notice a reflection of the apologetic southern Russian pronunciation: “who let him into the lands.” In the monuments of the 15th and especially the 16th centuries. Akanye becomes the dominant feature of Moscow pronunciation, and such pronunciation also extends to vocabulary of Northern Russian origin: see the spelling of paryadnya (household) in the Konshinsky list of “Domostroi”.
The Moscow dialect becomes the dialectal basis of the language of the entire Great Russian people, and as certain Russian lands are included in the emerging centralized Moscow state, the features of the leading dialect spread throughout the entire Great Russian territory. This same Central Russian mixed dialect is turning into a dialect base for a literary and written language, serving the needs of the entire Great Russian people. The Old Russian literary and written language, transplanted to new soil, forms the Moscow variety of the written language, which initially developed alongside its other branches. As the territory of the Moscow state expanded, all branches of the written language were gradually replaced by the Muscovite variety, especially after the introduction of printing from the end of the 16th century. Other varieties of the Old Russian literary and written language, which developed on the territory of the Lithuanian state and Poland, then became the source of the Belarusian (from the 15th century) and Ukrainian (from the 16th century) languages that were gradually forming in parallel with the language of the Great Russian people.
Let us turn to a more detailed analysis of the language of early Moscow writing. Along with the spiritual letters of the first Moscow princes, Ivan Kalita, his sons - Simeon Ivanovich Gordoy and Ivan Ivanovich, and his grandson Dmitry Donskoy, the above-mentioned entry on the “Siysky Gospel”, dating from 1340, is among the monuments of early writing. The entry states that The church book of the gospel-aprakos was rewritten “in the city of Moscow on the Dvina... by command” of Grand Duke Ivan, which shows the importance of Moscow as an all-Russian center that supplied even the distant North with church books. Along with this, the record contains an enthusiastic description of the activities of the Moscow prince, which is a unique literary work - “Praise to Ivan Kalita.” It is contained on l. 216 of the manuscript on both sides, occupying two columns, and represents a rare case of an ancient Russian literary monument preserved in an autograph to this day. This is especially valuable for the history of a literary language, since the analysis of a monument does not require preliminary textual research. The clerks Melenty and Prokosha proved themselves to be experienced authors, outstanding experts in various languages and literary-traditional texts. For example, there is the Hebrew phrase sego upyk, which, apparently, should be read as hay aruko, i.e., the designation of the Talmudic calendar term “long year,” when, according to the Jewish calendar, an additional month, “second Adar,” is inserted in order to even out the lag of the lunar year from the solar year (a, 4), the Hebrew name for the month of Nisan (a, 7); Roman date designation: “in E_. And. kaland m(s_)tsa March” (a, 5-6). Analysis of the calendar data of the record allows us to date it with complete accuracy: it was compiled on February 25, 1340.
The text of the entry contains a rich collection of quotes. The appearance in the Russian land (“in the desert lands”) of a righteous prince, who carries out judgment “not according to reward,” was allegedly foretold by the biblical prophet Ezekiel. In the Old Testament book, inscribed with the name of the named prophet and well known to ancient Russian readers in the ancient Slavic text “Explanatory Prophets”, the oldest list of which was copied in Novgorod back in 1047 by the priest Upir, we do not find exactly the words that we read in the recording ( a, 13-18). Probably, the scribes did not quote their source verbatim, for nevertheless, many passages were found in it that were similar to the record in meaning and style.
Next we read a precise and lengthy quotation from the famous monument of ancient Russian literature of the Kievan period - “Sermons on Law and Grace” (a, 22-b, 1). Using the words of the named literary source, scribes compare the activities of Ivan Kalita as an educator of Moscow with his predecessors - the apostles, educators of ancient Rome, Asia, India and Hierapolis. This passage from the “Sermon on Law and Grace” was repeatedly quoted by Russian and South Slavic authors in the 13th-15th centuries. The quote in the above entry most accurately conveys the source. In turn, in the works of later Moscow writing, the same text is quoted not according to the source, but according to the entry in the “Siysky Gospel”. Thus, the recording can be considered as a kind of focus, refracting the ray of the previous era and transmitting its reflection to the future.
However, the authors of “Praise...” were not satisfied with just a quote from an 11th century monument. They boldly combine the tradition coming from Hilarion of Kyiv with other traditional lines going back to the “Tale of Bygone Years” and to the legends that lived in the family of princes from the descendants of Vladimir Monomakh. This is a reminiscence of the legend about the visit to the Russian land by the Apostle Andrew the First-Called (b, 1-3). Further, Ivan Kalita is compared with Emperor Constantine, the founder of Constantinople (b, 9-10), with the Byzantine emperor, legislator Justinian (b, 25), with the famous Byzantine monarch Manuel Komnenos (c, 16-22).
Everything noted proves the good knowledge of the authors of the recording in ancient Slavic-Russian translated literature. They undoubtedly know the translated Byzantine chronicles (George Amartol, John Malala, Nicephorus, Manasseh), which speak about the named figures of world history. Melenty and Prokosha also showed their knowledge of such translated works as “The Legend of the Indian Kingdom,” where Emperor Manuel acts as a co-questioner of the legendary “Tsar and Priest John,” the pious ruler of the Indian land. This story of Serbian origin came to Rus' no later than the beginning of the 13th century. and was reflected in the “Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land,” which speaks of Emperor Manuel’s fear of the ancestor of Prince Ivan, Vladimir Monomakh. There is reason to believe that the authors of the record relied not only on translated books, but also on oral legends, in which the name of Tsar Manuel was intertwined with the names of the Russian princes Vladimir Monomakh and Andrei Bogolyubsky.
If, in terms of literary erudition, Melenty and Prokosha showed themselves to be followers and continuers of the stylistic traditions of Kievan Rus, then individual observations of the written language allow us to discern in it phenomena characteristic of the subsequent period in the development of Moscow writing in the 14th-16th centuries. For example: akan at the beginning of the word apushshii (a, 14), as well as the spelling grand prince (b, 16) with inflection -ой вм. -y, which also brings our monument closer to the Moscow dialect of subsequent times.
Noteworthy in the recording is the adherence of the scribes in some cases to the norms of Central Bulgarian spelling. This concerns the transmission of the letters i and iA through the letter b. Let us note, for example, the divine scriptures (b. 20), anyA and ouderab (gerunds - in, 20-21), pominab (the same - g. 8). Such linguistic features are generally considered to be a manifestation of the second South Slavic influence on Russian writing, which, however, arose later, from the end of the 14th century.
Let us also note a peculiar grammatical turn with a paratactic connection of nouns: command slave bim (a, 10). Such paratactic combinations are common in Russian written and oral language starting from the 15th century.
Finally, the originality of the syntactic structure in “Praise...” is characterized by a conglomeration of independent participial phrases and independent dative phrases, not related in meaning to the subject (for example, in 1-15). Similar phenomena of syntactic stylistics will become frequent in the monuments of the 15th-16th centuries, especially in panegyric hagiographic literature.
So, an analysis of the language of the earliest monument of Moscow literature allows us to draw two main conclusions: this literature is inextricably linked with the stylistic traditions of the Kyiv era, it early develops stylistic features characteristic of its later development in the 15th-16th centuries.
The formation of a centralized state around Moscow puts an end to the previously existing isolated numerous appanage principalities. This political and economic unification of the previously disparate Russian lands inevitably entailed the development and enrichment of various forms of business correspondence.
If during the period of feudal fragmentation the appanage prince, whose possessions sometimes did not extend beyond one settlement or the course of some provincial river, could see all his subjects every day and verbally convey to them the necessary orders, now, when the possessions of the Moscow state began to extend from the banks The Baltic to the confluence of the Oka and the Volga and from the Arctic Ocean to the upper reaches of the Don and Dnieper, orderly correspondence became necessary to govern such a vast territory. And this required the involvement of a large number of people for whom literacy and writing business papers became their profession.
In the first decades of the existence of the Moscow Principality, the duties of scribes continued to be handled by church ministers - deacons, clerks and their assistants - clerks. So, under the Spiritual Certificate of Ivan Kalita we read the signature: “and the letter is the psal of the clerk of the great prince of Kostroma.” The authors of “Praise...” Melenty and Prokosha were clerks. However, writing soon ceased to be a privilege of the clergy and scribes began to be recruited from secular people. But due to the inertia of the language, the term by which these officials of the Moscow state, secular in origin and way of life, designated themselves, was preserved. The words clerk and clerk continued to be used to refer to the scribes of the grand ducal and local offices, which soon received the name of orders. Affairs in these institutions were carried out by order clerks, who developed a special “order syllable” that was close to the colloquial speech of the common people, but also contained certain traditional formulas and phrases.
Words and expressions such as petition, beat with the forehead (ask for something) have become an integral part of the command syllable. It has become generally accepted that the petitioner, at the beginning of the petition, list all the numerous titles and titles of the high-ranking person to whom he addressed the request, and be sure to name the full name and patronymic of this person. On the contrary, the petitioner had to invariably write about himself only in a derogatory form, without adding a patronymic to his name and adding to it such designations of real or imaginary dependence as slave, slave, serf.
During this historical period, the word gramata in the meaning of business paper, document became especially widespread (although this word, borrowed from the Greek language in the initial period of Slavic writing, had previously had such a meaning). Complex terms appear in which the noun is defined by adjectives: spiritual letter, spiritual letter (will), contractual letter, folding letter, assigned letter, allotment letter (which established the boundaries of land grants), etc. Not limited to the genre of letters, business writing develops such forms , like court records, interrogatory records.
By the XV-XVI centuries. This includes the compilation of new sets of judicial decisions, for example, the Code of Laws of Ivan III (1497), the Pskov Judicial Charter (1462-1476), in which, based on the articles of Russkaya Pravda, the further development of legal norms was recorded. In business writing, terms appear that reflect new social relations (younger brother, older brother, boyar children), new monetary relations that developed during the Moscow period (bondage, money, etc.). We can recognize as derivative terms such as business people, bonded people, etc. The development of abundant social terminology, brought to life by the complication of socio-economic relations, is associated with the direct impact of the folk-colloquial speech element on the literary and written language.
B. A. Larin, considering the question of how much the language of business monuments of the 15th-17th centuries can be considered. a direct reflection of the spoken language of that era, came to a negative conclusion. In his opinion, which is fully shared by us, despite the relatively close proximity of the language of monuments of this type to colloquial speech, even such of them as interrogative speeches experienced the continuous and powerful influence of the written orthographic tradition, dating back to the ancient Slavic writing X —XI centuries Not a single written source of Ancient Rus' in all periods of historical development could be free from such traditional influence.
The enrichment and increase in the number of forms of business writing indirectly influenced all genres of written speech and ultimately contributed to the overall progressive development of the literary and written language of Moscow Rus'. The same scribes, clerks and clerks, in their free time from working in the orders, took on the task of rewriting books, not only chronicles, but also theological and liturgical ones, while they involuntarily introduced into the texts the skills they acquired when drawing up business documents, which led to an ever-increasing diversity of literary and written language.
This language, on the one hand, was more and more imbued with the speech features of business writing, which was approaching the spoken language of the people, on the other hand, it was subjected to artificial archaization under the influence of the second South Slavic influence.
Here it is necessary to say in more detail specifically about the linguistic side of this historical and cultural process, which is very broad in its social causes and consequences, since its other aspects are revealed in more detail in the available scientific literature.
The first to draw attention to the linguistic aspect of the problem of the second South Slavic influence was Acad. A. I. Sobolevsky in the monograph “Translated Literature of Moscow Rus'” (M., 1903). Then these issues were dealt with by Academician. M. N. Speransky. During the Soviet period, the works of D. S. Likhachev were devoted to them. Yugoslav and Bulgarian researchers are also paying attention to the development of the problem.
It can now be considered generally accepted that the process, usually designated as the second South Slavic influence on the Russian language and Russian literature, is closely connected with the ideological movements of the era, with the growing and strengthening relations of the then Muscovite Rus' with Byzantium and the South Slavic cultural world. This process should be considered as one of the stages in the general history of Russian-Slavic cultural relations.
First of all, it should be noted that the second South Slavic influence on Rus' must be compared with the first influence and at the same time opposed to it. The first South Slavic influence should be recognized as the influence of South Slavic culture on East Slavic culture, which took place at the very beginning of East Slavic writing, in the X-XI centuries, when the Old Slavic church book came to Rus' from Bulgaria.
The very formation of the Old Russian literary and written language is due to the influence of ancient South Slavic writing on the spoken language of the Eastern Slavs. However, by the end of the 14th century. this impact gradually fades away, and the written monuments of that time completely assimilated the ancient Slavic written element of folk-colloquial East Slavic speech.
During the heyday of the ancient Russian Kievan state, the South Slavic countries, in particular Bulgaria, were defeated and enslaved by the Byzantine Empire. With particular force, the Byzantines persecuted and destroyed at this time all traces of ancient Slavic writing on Bulgarian soil. Therefore, in the XII-early XIII centuries. the cultural influence of one branch of the Slavs on another went in the direction from Kievan Rus to the Balkans. This explains the penetration of many works of Old Russian writing to the Bulgarians and Serbs precisely in this era. As M. N. Speransky noted, not only such monuments of literature of Kievan Rus as “The Word of Law and Grace” or “The Life of Boris and Gleb”, but also translated works - “The History of the Jewish War” or “The Tale of Akira the Wise” - in the mentioned period they came from Kievan Rus to the Bulgarians and Serbs, who used the cultural assistance of Rus' during their liberation from Byzantine dependence at the beginning of the 13th century.
In the middle of the 13th century. the situation changes again. The Russian land is experiencing a brutal Tatar-Mongol invasion, which was accompanied by the destruction of many cultural values and caused a general decline in art and writing.
By the end of the 12th century. The Bulgarians, and then the Serbs, manage to achieve state independence from the Byzantine Empire, conquered in 1204 by the crusaders (Western European knights). Around the middle of the 13th century. The secondary flowering of culture and literature in Bulgaria begins - the “Silver Age” of Bulgarian writing (in contrast to the first period of its heyday in the 10th century, called the “Golden Age”). The “Silver Age” dates back to the renewal of old translations from Greek and the appearance of many new translated works, and predominantly works of ascetic and mystical content were borrowed, which is associated with the spread of the hesychast movement (silent monks). The literary language is undergoing serious reform, in which new strict spelling and stylistic norms are being established.
The spelling reform of the Bulgarian language is usually associated with the activities of the literary school of Patriarch Euthymius in the then capital of the Central Bulgarian Kingdom - Tarnovo. The heyday of the Tarnovo school was about 25 years, from 1371 to 1396, until the conquest and enslavement of Bulgaria by the Ottoman Turks.
In parallel, in the XIII-XIV centuries. Slavic culture and literature begins to develop in Serbia. The Slavic revival in the Balkans at this time took place, as in the 11th-12th centuries, under the influence of Rus'.
By the end of the 14th century, when Rus' began to recover from the Tatar-Mongol pogrom and when a single centralized state was emerging around Moscow, there was a need for cultural figures among Russians. And here the natives of the Slavic South - Bulgarians and Serbs - come to the rescue. Metropolitan Cyprian, who headed at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, came from Bulgaria. Russian church. Cyprian was closely associated with the Tarnovo literary school and, perhaps, was even a relative of the Bulgarian Patriarch Euthymius. At the initiative of Cyprian, a correction of church liturgical books was undertaken in Rus' according to the norms of Central Bulgarian spelling and morphology. The successor of Cyprian's work was his nephew, also a Bulgarian by birth, Gregory Tsamblak, who held the post of Metropolitan of Kyiv. He was a prolific writer and preacher who widely disseminated the ideas of the Tarnovo literary school. Later, in the middle and at the end of the 15th century, the author of numerous hagiographic works, Pachomius Logofet (Serb by birth and nickname: Pachomius the Serb), worked in Novgorod and then in Moscow. Other cultural figures can also be named who found refuge in Rus' in these centuries, fleeing from the Turkish conquerors of Bulgaria and other South Slavic lands.
However, the second South Slavic influence cannot be reduced only to the activities of immigrants from Bulgaria and Serbia. This influence was a very deep and wide socio-cultural phenomenon. This includes the penetration of the ideas of monastic silence into Rus', the impact of Byzantine and Balkan art on the development of Russian architecture and icon painting (remember the work of the artists Theophan the Greek and Andrei Rublev) and, finally, the development of translated and original literature and writing. In order for this progressive, progressive process to be widely manifested in all areas of culture, internal conditions were also necessary, which consisted in the development of the then Russian society.
Obviously, in the then Moscow Rus', the ruling classes and ideologists of the autocratic system that was emerging in those years sought to elevate everything connected with its authority above ordinary earthly ideas. Hence the desire to make the official literary and written language as different as possible from everyday colloquial speech, to contrast it with it. It was also important that the church at that time had to fight many anti-feudal ideological movements that acted in the form of Heresies (Strigolnikov, etc.), and these latter relied on the support of the people, were closer to both popular culture and popular speech.
The mutual connection between the autocratic state and the Orthodox Church led to the creation of the idea of Moscow as the head and center of all Orthodoxy, of Moscow as the New Jerusalem and the Third Rome. This idea, which manifested itself simultaneously with the Second South Slavic influence, contributed to the establishment of Moscow absolutism and served as a brake on the development of the national language, alienating its official variety from the vernacular.
However, at the same time, the second South Slavic influence was not without positive aspects, enriching the vocabulary and stylistics of the language in its high styles and strengthening the ties of Muscovite Rus' with the South Slavic lands.
Meshchersky E. History of the Russian literary language
Sound, the most natural form of language existence, was the only one for a long time. The language was only spoken. But such speech is momentary, it sounds only “here” and “now”. The need to transmit speech over a distance and preserve it for long periods of time led to the invention of writing - written speech appeared.
At first, written language was only a recording of spoken speech, “a frozen moment.” Then it turned out that the difference - to sound and to be written - is so huge, such its consequences emerged that it became possible to talk about two languages - predominantly sound, oral, and predominantly written. Written language is more capacious for intellectual information, oral - for expressing emotions, moods, relationships.
Actually, the linguistic differences between written and spoken speech are primarily syntactic differences. Oral language does not tolerate difficulties, but it cultivates understatement. Written, on the contrary, requires full expression and, moreover, coherence, therefore it allows for various inclusions, additions, and explanations. But most importantly, the written language required the establishment of rules for writing and reading. Thanks to him, grammatical arts arose in the names we are familiar with - spelling, punctuation. An indispensable property of written language is the binding nature of norms that prescribe how to write and read.
The laws of oral and written communication are different. Therefore, even in the same situation, it is almost impossible to say and write in the same way. This is how it is played out in a letter from playwright A. N. Ostrovsky to his friend N. A. Dubrovsky: “Nikolka! Why don’t you lead Vetlitsky and where the hell are you? Will you listen to me? Well, just wait! You can’t write it like that, that’s just what I thought, but you have to write it like this:
“Dear sir Nikolai Alexandrovich, would you like to welcome me today directly from the office to the dining table, which will greatly oblige A. Ostrovsky, who deeply respects you and is devoted to you.”
The distribution of spheres between oral and written language is essential not only for communication, but also for culture. Oral language skills - folklore, propaganda, rumors. Everything else - politics, science and learning, fiction in all its genre richness - is served by the written language.
So, in the simplest case, the relationship between oral and written language is similar to the relationship between an object and its reflection. In more complex situations, the symmetry of these relationships is broken. At the same time, there may be “subjects without reflection” - dialects, vernacular, unwritten languages. There are also “reflections without an object” - these are Sanskrit, ancient Greek, Latin and other dead languages.
