DONOSHENIE FROM THE LAST THIRD OF THE 18TH CENTURY AS A LINGUISTIC SOURCE

This article provides a linguistic source study of the graphic, orthographic, lexical, and other linguistic means of DONOSHENIE — a petition document, conveying the unique character of the Russian language in the last third of the 18th century. The study is based on a Transbaikal business document from this period — “Donoshenie of the Selenga townsman Pakhom Kuznetsov on his robbery by the Bratsk Cossacks,” which stands out for its exceptional linguistic content. 
In the Russian literary language of this era, an official business style based on Book Slavonic was finally established. The language of the Donoshenie under study is clearly characterized by typical style-forming devices of the official style, its speech formulas, and strict adherence to the graphic and orthographic rules of cursive business writing. At the same time, in his description of the conflict and the complex history of its resolution, the author of the document uses a combination of colloquial and literary means, interacting with each other in accordance with the communicative task of the writer. The text of the Donoshenie uses colloquial words that became part of the Russian language in the 15th–17th centuries врасплогъ, наперво, наодине, мешечек, наклобучивать, обробеть, осамка, примером ‘approximately’, шпакурство, phraseological unit стремль головы своей бежать (to run away with one’s head). To describe the crime within the framework of official document drafting rules, colloquial elements are combined with literary words, contributing to the creation of verbal expressions that combine literary and colloquial features: составляэтъ шпакурство, увещевал наодине, поступили противо меня зверски с важною осамкою. 
For the same purpose, the author of the denunciation uses literary verb phrases such as приити в великую опасность, привести в дальное порекание, оставлять без дал(ь)- ного затруднения, предать к защитительному молчанию and others—previously completely unfamiliar in business discourse. 
Compliance with the norms of cursive business writing allowed for the variation of graphemes, reflected in the document in the form of the use of rows of doublet letters «ѕ — з», «i — j — и — й», «ꙋ — у», «е — э», as well as the desire of the scribe to establish individual rules for writing the letter “й” before a vowel and at the end of a word, the letter “и” — at the beginning of a word and to indicate the conjunction и, the letter “э” — instead of “е” before a vowel not at the beginning of a word.