Release:
2025. Vol. 11. № 2 (42)About the author:
Tatyana D. Korkina, Cand. Sci. (Philol.), Senior Researcher, Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, RussiaAbstract:
In this article we discover and analyze several grammar peculiarities in the language of a group of regional chancellery manuscripts from the Russian North, namely the Kevrola custom books dating back to the 1710-s, stored in the holding no. 10 of the St Petersburg Institute of History Research Historical Archive. These previously unpublished texts were usually regarded exclusively as a source for historical lexicologists and lexicographers. The remote location of the Kevrola customs, lack of contacts with central customs and trading routes, hiring locals, merging the Kevrola books with the documents of the minor customs of the Kevrola district headed by the same officer into one volume — all that facilitated the emergence of numerous vernacular (both local and all-Russian) lexical units in the text of the aforementioned books. The Kevrola books also abounded in dialect morphological features, like varying use of -e/-ě/-i/-y in a wide range of positions according to their non-uniform provenance. For instance, several case forms feature the alternation of dialectal and standard affixes. As a rule, the standard form prevails while the use of dialectal variants remains sporadic, but in case of certain words the dialectal affix may be the predominant choice.Keywords:
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