The Evolution of the System of Long and Short Adjectives in Old Russian

• मुख्य लेखक: Larsen, Karin (auth)
• स्वरूप: इलेक्ट्रोनिक पुस्तक अध्याय
• प्रकाशित: Bern Peter Lang International Academic Publishers 2005
• श्रृंखला: Slavistische Beitraege 439
• विषय: Language; Adjective; Adjectives; adjectives of affiliation; attributive position; Church Slavic; Evolution; Larsen; Long; Novogrod Chronicle; prehistoric Slavic; Russian; Short; System
• ऑनलाइन पहुंच: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

The present study is a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the system of long and short adjectives in Old Russian, a profound language change to which very little previous research has been devoted. It is generally assumed that in prehistoric Slavic, the system was purely grammatical with the long form denoting definiteness and the short form denoting indefiniteness. The present study finds, on the basis of evidence collected from Old Russian chronicle texts, that even the earliest of these sources display a substantially transformed system no longer reflecting the opposition between definiteness and indefiniteness, but governed by parameters of information structure.