SOME FORMS OF POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS IN OLD RUSSIAN TEXTS IN THE 14th AND 15th CENTURIES

In some Old Russian texts from the 14th and 15th centuries, especially in the testaments and treaties of grand and feudal princes, the following genitive singular feminine forms of possessive pronouns mojь ‘my’, tvojь ‘your (= thine)’, svojь ‘one’s own’, našь ‘our’, and vašь ‘your’ are attested: moiě / moie, tvoiě / tvoie, svoiě / svoie, našiě / našie, vašiě / vašie. Šaxmatov [Šaxmatov 1957] claims that they arose under the influence of adjectival and pronominal forms like siniě ‘blue.gen.sg.f’, dobryě ‘good.gen.sg.f’, tyě ‘that.gen. sg.f’, but there are objections to any of these proposals.

I argue that genitive singular feminine was influenced by genitive plural: moiě, tvoiě, svoiě, našiě, and vašiě were modelled after moixъ, tvoixъ, svoixъ, našixъ, and vašixъ. As for the loss of these genitive singular forms from the dialects of Central Russia, it first affected the forms moíě, tvoíě, svoíě, whereas nášiě and vášiě were retained longer. This is probably connected to stress placement—namely, the forms in -íě with new stressed i were more likely to be perceived as non-standard than the forms with an unstressed ending.