ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF COMBINING TWO SPELLING SYSTEMS: CHURCH-SLAVIC ELEMENTS IN MANUSCRIPT TEXTS XVIII CENTURY


2021. № 3 (29), 316-322

Lomonosov Moscow State University

Abstract:

The article examines the graphic and spelling design of handwritten texts of the late 18th century, containing fragments of words and conversations of Basil the Great. After the introduction by Peter I of the civil type, the system of spelling rules that had developed in the Church Slavonic language and recorded in the Church Slavonic grammars was destroyed. The texts published by the citizen, including the works of Basil the Great (in 1782, the University Printing House published “Conversation, or the Moral Word about the Drinking”, “Conversations on Six Days”), do not include elements of Church Slavonic spelling. Handwritten sources of the 18th century, which are copies of various printed editions, rarely became the subject of linguistic research, but we managed to find that the writers seek to restore some of the spelling norms of Church Slavonic grammar, although they do this inconsistently. In some of the texts we have studied, we note only individual Church Slavonic elements (for example, abbreviations of words with the help of titlo), in others there are more of them, however, only a few of our authors reflect in their texts knowledge of at least certain rules of Church Slavonic spelling (for example, the distribution of the letters "o" аnd "ω"). In all likelihood, it can be assumed that the inclusion of certain graphic and orthographic Church Slavonic elements seems to those who write such texts to be an important marker of the content of these works, their relationship to religious discourse.