ON NOUN FORMS IN TOLSTOVSKII APOSTOLUS FROM THE 14th CENTURY (NLR, Q.n.I.5)

This paper focuses on noun forms found in the insufficiently explored Old Russian manuscript Tolstovskii Apostolus from the 14th century. The author examines the correlation of archaic and newer forms in following grammatical categories: gender, number, animacy, case. The gender archaism manifests the full concord of the noun starěišina and its adjectives in the feminine, while a male person is mentioned in the context. The category of animacy does not cover all cases of noun usage, for there is an archaic homonymy of nominative and accusative forms in masculine nouns which also point to a male person. A certain competition of ancestral and newer dual forms is manifested in number. Sometimes plural forms displace the old duals. In the case category, the author observes some archaisms in the masculine (synu in genitive singular, kamy in nominative singular), while neuter nouns of *s-stems demonstrate unordered parallelism of case form usage: nebesi — nebesě, tělesi — telesě in genitive and locative, nebomь — nebesěmь, tělomь — telesěmъ, in the instrumental case.

The presence of archaisms can be explained mainly by textual factors whereas the innovative forms obtain a more reliable interpretation, due to linguistic reasons. More thorough analysis and more precise results will be possible after completing the digital publication of the manuscript in the “Manuscript” portal (http://manuscripts.ru/mns/portal.main?p1=64).