ON A PECULIARITY OF RUSSIAN MANUSCRIPTS OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES

In article probable causes of writing of a "excess" letter и after ы and и in the middle and at the end of words in some Russian manuscripts of the XV-XVI centuries are considered. The problem consists in character of this phenomenon: whether was it а feature of spelling or reflection of phonetic processes. The manuscript of the Russian state library from Ovchinnikov's collection where this phenomenon is found very often, allows to see its source in a diacritical mark – a kendema ( ) considered by the copyist as the letter и written over line. But it is contradicted by a "excess" letter in business documents of the XVII century where there are no diacritical marks. Therefore, it is still not clear whether or not the same phenomenon is present in both Russian manuscripts of book texts and in Russian business writing. In the manuscript from Ovchinmikov's collection there are morphological features possibly connected with the "excess" letter и. These are contractions of nouns of a neutral gender по ѹспени, во пѣнихъ, also often found contractions of adjectives of a masculine gender of singular in a nominative, not contractions of adjectives in oblique cases of plural such as простыихъ, живыимъ, ласковыими and others, and also such forms as лютыиа, пещныиа.