VARIATION OF THE 1ST PERSON PLURAL FORM OF THE COPULA/ AUXILLIARY IN OLD RUSSIAN TEXTS

 Wide variation in the spelling of the 1st person plural form of the copula verb (jesmъ, jesmy, jesmь, jesmi, jesmo, jesma, jesme, jesm’a) is attested in 11th- to 17th-century Old Russian texts. This was due to many factors that were at work in different periods of the history of the Russian written language. Old and Middle Russian corpora provide abun- dant material for investigating the conditions and mechanisms of operation of these fac- tors. Of special interest is the form jesm’ą, which is not attested in other Slavic languages, but was extensively used in the 14th to 17th century in Russian business writing and “hy- brid” types of literary language. The article argues that the spelling jesm’ą reflects the phe- nomenon of akanje in pronouncing the dialectal form jesm’e. Having emerged in the akan- je zone, jesm’ą asserted itself as a written norm in the Ambassadorial Prikaz and therefore spread all over the territory of Muscovy, including regions not affected by akanje.