Re: [tied] Old Rus' of the many "nationes"

--- Sergejus Tarasovas <S.Tarasovas@...>
wrote:

>
> The only material records of Krivichian at our
> disposal are birch
> bark inscriptions from Novgorod, Pskov, Staraja
> Russa and
> thereabouts. More or less prominent Krivichian
> influence can be
> traced in some Standard Old Russian (= your Kievan
> koine; by the way,
> this term, as a less confusing, is indeed used by
> some linguists,
> including Zalizniak) documents from Smolensk and
> Polotsk areas, but
> this evidence is rather scarce and doesn't help
> detect any
> differences between the Krivichian of Polotsk and
> the Krivichian of
> Pskov and Novgorod (Novgorodian koine).
>
> By the reasons discussed aboce, Zalizniak compiled a
> description (in
> a fashion of a classical historical grammar) of what
> he calls 'Old
> Novgorodian dialect'. The main reasin he uses such a
> neutral term
> rather than 'Krivichian' is tend to abstract from
> the issues of
> Krivichian in the broad sense.

*****GK: This is a bit confusing for me. I had always
distinguished the Krivichi (all branches) from the
Novdorodians (Novgorodtsi, Slovene). Does Zalizniak
consider Novgorodian to be Krivichian?*****

>
> >GK: Could we then state that in 1100 and earlier

the

> > language of Novgorod was "Old Russian
>
> Whay not, but it was definitely not the Old Russian
> of the Ve,tic^i
> and Radimic^i territory. Two Old Russians would be
> inconvenient.

****GK: Old Russian(VR), Old Russian(N)(:=)). And then
there's Ryazan'. What can you tell me about them? It
was a very important mediaeval state in the Rus'
complex. Has anything survived to assist linguists
here?*****

>
> (ST)I'm inclined to think it makes sense to use a
> general term as Old
> Russian (let's treat Russian as an adjective from
> Rus' :) )

*****GK: That would be confusing and misleading for
the whole complex, linguistic needs notwithstanding.
There's been an attempt to introduce "Old Rus'ian"
(not just for linguistics) but that turned out to be
fairly useless: people understood it as "Old Russian",
with all attendant consequences. I thing it would be
much better to have an irregular adjectival form like
"Old Rus'" or plain "Old Rus". Which would both
eliminate the confusion and economize letters
(:=)).***

or any

> other politically correct equivalent (eg, East
> Slavic) when there's a
> need to designate a whole set of dialects sharing
> some specific
> features (a _real_ need as to linguistics), and more
> precise terms
> when one speaks of specific dialects (Krivichian) or
> koines
> (Kievan/Novgorodian). I feel comfortable with the
> statement like
> 'RusIskaja PravIda is written in Kievan koine'
> (instead of
> conventional Old Russian). I'm still not sure it's
> written in Old
> Ukrainian, though :).

*****GK: Well one tip (precisely) about origin is that
although practically all of the extant manuscripts are
from Russian territory,and were copied by Russian
scribes most of them avoid the Russian hard double
-ss- innovation in the title but faithfully copy Old
Ukrainian -s's- (or -sIs-) or simply have the single
-s- There are other indicators as well. Like RUSYN and
not RUSSKII in article 1. (:=))*****

>
> Sergei
>
>

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