CHURCH SLAVONIC PRONUNCIATION: PROBLEMS OF LINGUISTIC STANDARDS

The article examines theoretical problems of codification of orthoepic standards of Church Slavonic, which constitutes an example of a “sleeping” language, that is, a language, which currently has no native speakers (its oral form reduces to the recitation of written texts). The Church Slavonic orthoepy is essentially the rules for reading aloud the Church Slavonic text. The paper discusses the algorithm of the transition from the written Church Slavonic text to its standard reading, taking into account the peculiarities of regional variants of reading the Church Slavonic texts aloud. It poses the question as to whether it is possible to use the civil alphabet as an intermediate step of such an algorithm. It claims that the existing codification does not reflect the variation of standards as well as the problems of describing the ratio of normative intonation and the usage in reading aloud Church Slavonic texts. The actual practice is a compromise between the rules for reading the Church Slavonic text (especially as the orthoepic recommendations sometimes vary in different textbooks) and the reading skills of the Russian speakers. The article substantiates the necessity of introducing a normative scale of Church Slavonic orthoepy.