Языковые особенности текста Супрасльской летописи

Abstract

This article presents a little-known ancient monument of the XVI century, the Belarusian chronicle called the Suprasl Chronicle. This name comes from the name of the town in the North-Eastern Poland, which was discovered in the 1 half of the XIX century. The chronicle was published in XVII and in XXXV volumes of the Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles. It consists of 2 large parts – all-Russian chronicle and the so-called Chronicler of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. This chronicle is the oldest list of the Belarusian-Lithuanian protographs. The phonetic and some lexical features of the text of the chronicle were studied in order to identify the language in which it was written. This development should be recognised as a starting point for a more detailed analysis of the specific linguistic phenomena. In general, the language of the chronicle is not devoid of the Church Slavonic phonetic elements, including: the implementation of groups of type *TorT, *orT, old Church Slavonic, the implementation of the Slavic groups *tj, *dj, *ktj, traces of realisation of sonorants consonants. Such phonetic phenomena alternate with examples of the East Slavic realisation of the named phonetic phenomena, we have also introduced some South-Western dialect Belarusian language features. The influence of the Polish linguistic and lexical phenomena is of particular interest in the chronicle. They do not function as pure borrowings, but most likely the Polish influence should be recognised as a living phenomenon in the territory of the monument. From the linguistic point of view, the monument is an interesting text. It sheds light on the question of what language was used in the early BelarusianLithuanian chronicle and on the national and religious affiliation of the author of the monument. He came from the territory of South-Western Belarus, he was a Belarusian patriot of the Orthodox faith, although not very experienced in Chronicles. He used the typical Russian Chronicles language and not eschewed dialect features.