ON THE POSSESSIVE DATIVE CASE IN OLD RUSSIAN TEXTS AND IN MODERN RUSSIAN DIALECTS

The paper deals with the use of the possessive dative case in Old Russian texts in comparison with modern Russian dialects. The dative case of possession in Old Russian texts is commonly associated with Church Slavonic tradition, i.e. as South Slavic linguistic feature, but the use of the dative case in nominal and predicative possessive constructions was known to Old Russian non-literary texts of different dialect localization — both in Novgorod birch bark letters and in southern Old Russian sources. Apparently, this archaic usage dating back to Proto-Slavic was known throughout the Old Russian language but regularly only in enclitic pronouns of the 1st and 2nd persons, in the southern Old Russian dialects also possible in pronoun of the 3rd person. These data correspond to those of modern dialects where possessive constructions with the dative case are recorded sporadically in different dialects both northern and southern, and in some recently described systems with personal pronouns. The possessive use of the dative case of nouns was probably already archaic and dialectally limited in Old Russian but it is still preserved as a relic in dialects to this day.