A new approach to the enigmatic language of Kurbskij and its seeming “anomalies”

Abstract

In 2018, the author published a two-volume monograph in German entitled “Eine Syntax des ‘Novyj Margarit’ des A. M. Kurbskij. Philologisch-dependenzgrammatische Analysen zu einem kirchenslavischen Übersetzungskorpus” (“A Syntax of A. M. Kurbskij’s ‘Novyj Margarit’. A Philological and Dependency-grammatical Study of a Corpus of Church Slavonic Translations”). This article presents some results of the study in Russian and extends and complements the analysis begun in the monograph. The article focuses on the remarkable use of deverbal formations with the suffixes *‑m‑ and *‑n‑ having the meaning of passive necessity such as in до просвещаемы(х)/ad illuminandos ‘to those who have to be enlightened’. It is shown that the phenomenon in question, which can be observed in the Church Slavonic texts by Prince Andrei Kurbskij (1528–1583), should not be considered to be linguistically erroneous, as in the past. The fact that the use of the two formations mentioned is repeated in the same text and that examples of this phenomenon occur in different works by different authors suggests that it reflects a usage with a certain tradition. Consequently, the necessitative use of the deverbal suffixations has to be regarded as correct. In addition, a more systematic analysis makes it possible to show that a considerable number of other linguistic “anomalies” in Kurbskij’s works do not actually represent “anomalies”, or at least they are not linguistic errors of Kurbskij’s.