DIGLOSSIC NATURE OF SPELLING DUALISM IN RUSSIAN WRITTEN LANGUAGE OF 18TH CENTURY // Bulletin of BSU. Philology. - 2020. №4. . - С. 20-31.

DIGLOSSIC NATURE OF SPELLING DUALISM IN RUSSIAN WRITTEN LANGUAGE OF 18TH CENTURY

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The article reviews the problem of the formation of graphic and orthographic norms of Russian written language in the 18th century. In the language of business writing, an or- thographic usus was formed, due to the unusual interaction of the book and order tradi- tions. This interaction caused a variation in graphic and orthographic means, which, as a peculiar feature of business language, first opposed to the «civic ordinary dialect», and lat- er to the literary language of a new type – «Slavic Russian». This opposition is reviewed on the material of the Trans-Baikal business writing monuments and «Russian grammar» by Mikhail Lomonosov. The presence of parallel spelling norms has already been charac- terized in historical Russian studies as the concept of spelling dualism. However, this con- cept is supplemented in the article by an analysis of the functional opposition of two graphic and orthographic systems within the framework of the diglossic confrontation of two idioms – the clerical usus and the literary language of a new type. In order to avoid arbitrary interpretation of a number of spelling norms of business language as a reflection of phonetic processes in writing, the article sequentially delimits phonetic and graphic- orthographic variants. A comparative study allows to make the following conclusions: 1) double letters were used in handwritten documents almost until the end of the 18th cen- tury, while homophony was eliminated in the first third of the 18th century; 2) in contrast to the language of printed publications, special graphic and orthographic rules were im- plemented in clerical writing – the spelling of the letters Ь and Ъ, the lack of reflection of consonants softness, associated with the rule of using external letters in the command tra- dition; 3) in contrast to the language of printed publications, graphic and orthographic means in cursive writing varied according to certain principle of spelling-phonetic and phonemic principles of spelling prefixes and sentences on з/с; words with the suffix -ск- after stems on д/т (-дск-/-тск-/-цк-), forms of verbs -ся in the present and infinitive (-ться/-тся /-тца/-ца), mixing of writing letters ѣ and e.

usus of business writing of the 18th century; spelling norm; graphic and ortho- graphic options; cursive business writing.