The scribes’ changes

Since this thesis studies case endings of substantives in a period when linguistic changes took place, is it interesting to look into what kind of changes scribes, copying the manuscripts, made and why (from Alekseev 1999:43-47).

According to A. A. Alekseev, five types of changes were common when copying the manuscripts:

1) The scribe used his language and alphabet when writing. This could lead to mistakes when transliterating the Glagolitic letters into Cyrillic letters, e.g. when transliterating letters denoting numbers.

2) Scribes used their own local orthographic system when writing. This makes it possible to determine where and when the manuscripts were copied. But it happened that scribes were influenced by the text being copied, if he did not know how to write the letters, if he did not know the alphabet well or if he for some reason felt strongly for the way the letters were written in the text being copied.

3) Lapses, lapsus calami, due to fatigue, lack of concentration, led to the following: a) dittography (something written twice) of letters or syllables b) haplography, omission of letters or syllables c) writing of another letters or omission of parts of letters, e.g. parts of e or s or omission of passages with summarizing endings.

4) Errors due to problems when reading or understanding words, e.g. mistaking ,eltnm budet′ ‘will, will be’ for ,jkånm bolęt′ ‘to ache’ and djk vol ‘ox’ for ,jkt bole ‘more, more than’, etc., or errors in connection with dictations, e.g. gfxt pače ‘more, more than’for j,fxt obače ‘but, however’etc.

21_{For more information on the differences between the Preslav and Ohrid schools, see Slavova 2012 (1989),}

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5) Differences in the scribes’ linguistic competence and the linguistic changes that took place, leading to hesitations what to write, e.g. the changes in declensions, the number dual, the development of animacy, leading to the use of the genitive in the masculine accusative, the alternation between aorist, imperfect, perfect and participles, etc. (Alekseev 1999:43-47).

4. Theory

This study aims at gathering evidence about the case endings in the plural of eight chosen substantives in four cases in order to investigate if the alleged demise22 of the ŭ-declension never fully took place in the plural, or if the parallel occurrences could be explained by R. Lass’ theory on exaptation and A.Ch. Vostokov’s thoughts on the parallel use of the case endings of the ŭ- and o-declensions in one and the same source but with different syntactic roles. According to C. le Feuvre, the ŭ-stem paradigms were no longer productive in OCS (le Feuvre 2009:54). Exaptation of the ŭ-declension case endings could be that these endings started to be re-used again, after once having been replaced by the o-declension case endings for substantives belonging to the ŭ-declension, and possibly also being used for substantives belonging to the o-declension. This chapter consists of two sections: 4.1 deals with exaptation, and 4.2 looks into exaptation in relation to the ŭ- and o-declensions’ case endings.

4.1 Exaptation

The term “exaptation” as a way of describing the re-use of obsolete language forms, thus giving them new semantic roles in the development of languages, was introduced by R. Lass. In his article “How to do things with junk: exaptation in language evolution” he writes: “Historical junk, in any case, may be one of the back doors through which structural change gets into systems by idle material getting re-employed” (Lass 1988:52). The American linguist E.C. Traugott explains in the article “Exaptation and grammaticalization” the three possibilities arising when a form loses its function or is marginalized within a language system: it can be lost, it can be kept as marginal garbage or it can be reused for something else (exaptation), and she expresses the opinion that the key to R. Lass’s conception of exaptation is the observation

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that some forms lose their function because of phonological or other changes, leaving them “idle” junk, ready to be reused in a new grammatical function (Traugott 2004:03).

It is necessary to define the differences between analogy and exaptation: analogy is the process when the ŭ-declension class was absorbed by the o-declension class, and exaptation is the process of re-use of the lost case endings in new functions. The reduction of inflection and change of declensions must be analogy. According to D. Crystal, analogy is a grammatical change when irregular patterns are changed in accordance with the already existing regular ones; analogy is a reasoning process that grammatical usage is regular, a kind of process of imitation (Crystal 1987:234, 330). Thus, analogy is a process in order to imitate and simplify the grammar, when regular forms influence less regular forms and extend the regular patterns which already exist, but there is no re-use or functional change of the grammatical functions being excluded.

Exaptation is the conscious or unconscious re-use of something that no longer has the former meaning or function it once did. R. Lass clarifies that there is no need for something exapted to have fallen completely out of use; instead it has to do with re-functionalisation in general. He gives the example of the Finnish element *n which has meanings like locative in Proto-Uralic, an element which later, when the case system developed, became a marker of being or existence (email correspondence, September 16, 2015).

It is possible to link R. Lass’ theory on exaptation in language evolution to A. Ch. Vostokov’s thoughts on the use of case endings from both the ŭ- and o-declensions of one and the same substantive, in one and the same source, but with different grammatical roles. On page 92 in the word index of the Ostromir Gospel Lectionary of 1056-1057 it is claimed, in connection with the word uhäü+ in the genitive plural, that uhäüjd+ from the ŭ-declension, here termed the long form, is used after substantives, and from the o-declension, here termed the short form, is used after prepositions. This is to say that case endings of both the ŭ- and o- declensions could be found in one and the same substantive, in one and the same source, but with different roles. The declensions have their special use in different situations.