ZHE LI or LI ZHE: discourse particles and clitic clusters in Late Old Russian

This paper discusses the syntax and semantics of clustering discourse particles in Old Russian texts from the XVI-XVII centuries and early XVIII century. The cover term 'Late Old Russian' roughly corresponds to the label 'старорусский' in the Russian tradition. Previous research. Andrej A. Zalizniak [1: 29] proves that Early Old Russian (XI-XIII centuries) had a clitic template consisting of eight slots, the first five of them representing discourse particles: 1. ŽE (focus/contrast) 2. LI (alternative) 3. BO (causal) 4. TI 2 (affirmative-a homonym to 2 Sg.Dat TI 1 'to you') 5. BY (optative). He argues that Early Old Russian licensed a combination of the free focus and alternative particles with the order =ŽE=LI, while the reversed order was only possible, if LI was a bound element belonging to a complementizer, cf. [AŠČE=LI]=ŽE. Anton Zimmerling and Peter Kosta [4] compare the Old Russian clitic template to Balcanic Slavic and West Slavic types of a clitic template and argue that the salient features of the Old Russian template were the initial block of clustering particles, the lack of overt 3 p. BE-clitics in the present indicative and the placement of the 1-2 p. BE-auxiliaries after clitic pronouns. Anton Zimmerling [3] attempts at identifying the affirmative particle TI 2 /T' as part of the Old Czech clitic cluster. Andrej A. Zalizniak and Elena V. Paducheva [2: 297] analyze the combination of the primary general negation NE and the alternative particle LI and argue that LI has a wider scope in spite of the fact that NE normally precedes LI. Problem. It is unclear, to what degree Late Old Russian retained the clustering principle, since the system of clitic pronouns was degraded. Russian texts from this period attest both ŽE LI and LI ŽE.

Public Full-text