East Slavic imperfective verbs with the suffix -yva -/-iva - and the literary tradition

Characteristic East Slavic imperfective verbs with the suffix -yva-/-iva- were infrequent in Old Russian literary texts, but they were not marked as exclusively colloquial and impermissible in the literary language until the end of the 14th century: the choice of the pattern of imperfectivization was not a significant sign of the literary language, variation of the -a- and -yva-/-iva- patterns was possible. In the «hybrid» register tradition, based upon the writing practice of the Kievan chronicles, some steady phrases using -yva-/-iva-verbs were formed. In standard Church Slavonic texts of the 11th-14th centuries these verbs occurred rarely but also were not marked as specifically colloquial.

From the period of the «second South Slavic influence» the situation was changed: the imperfective -yva-/-iva- verbs became to be considered as specifically colloquial and impossible in standard Church Slavonic, while; in the «hybrid» register of literary language they were permitted as a feature of the colloquial language.