REVISION OF SYNTAX AND VOCABULARY IN THE TALE OF THE HOLY MARTYRS BORIS AND GLEB AND IN NESTOR’S LECTION ON THE LIFE AND MURDER OF BORIS AND GLEB

The paper describes the language revision which an anonymous author exerted while compiling the Tale of the Holy Martyrs Boris and Gleb along with the Tale on the Miracles on the basis of the account found in the Primary Chronicle, in comparison with the revision which Nestor the Monk made while composing the Lection on the Life and Murder of Boris and Gleb on the basis of the Tale. The strategies used by the anonymous hagiographer and Nestor have much in common, differing only in the intensity with which they exploit common devices — Church Slavonic vocabulary and Greek syntactic patterns (construction “byvati + passive participle”, causative construction with the subject of the infinitive in Acc. “sъtvoriti + Acc. + infinitive”, construction “byti + present participle”, phrases with participle as copula, Accusativus cum participio with verbs of perception, passive with the particle –sę etc.). Nestor employs a lager repertory of bookish Slavonic forms and more often substitutes Church Slavonic elements for Old Russian and dialectneutral ones. Nestor’s lexis features rare lexemes and words characteristic of Old Bulgarian texts but not used by other Old Russian authors. Evidence for dependence of the Lection on the Tale of Boris and Gleb and the Tale on the Miracles is proposed.