PHONETIC RUSISMS IN MODERN CHURCH SLAVONIC TEXTS: A CORPUS STUDY

 The study tested spellings that reflect the following phonetic rusisms: initial o in accordance with *(j)e, initial ja from *a, initial roT and loT from *orT and *olT, pleophony, ž from *dj, no effect of second palatalization, o after sibilants and c; in addition, the question of initial u and ju is considered. The material of the research is the digitized corpus of modern Church Slavonic texts. More than 500 rusisms were found, most of which were not previously noted in academic studies. The most important of them are the instances with o after soft sibilants, which refute the popular opinion that in the Church Slavonic language soft consonants are not combined with о. Phonetic rusisms are distributed in the corpus as follows: forms with k, g, x, and with pleophony are represented only in the Bible, Dobrotolubie, Menaion, and metatext (i.e. liturgical instructions, titles, tables of contents, etc.), and forms with ž from *dj and о after sibilants and с — not only in the above-mentioned, but in some other sources. It is significant that in some cases, Russian spellings are used in the corpus as part of repeated phrases, which allows at least some of these spellings to be considered as the norm of Church Slavonic texts.