On Some Means Expressing Imperative Semantics in Middle Russian Business and Household Documents of the 16th – 17th Centuries

The article is devoted to the use of verb forms (imperative and subjunctive mood) and syntactic constructions (dative subject + infinitive and dative subject + infinitive with a particle by) used to express imperative semantics in Middle Russian business and household sources of different genres. The paper studies such business sources of the 16th – 17th centuries related to clerical records management were investigated: ukaznaja gramota containing orders from the central secular and spiritual authorities to local officials; pamjat' reflecting the interaction of administrative persons and institutions. Household writing is represented by materials of private correspondence, which was informal and had no legal status, therefore, phenomena characteristic of a oral speech and not reflected in official documents are recorded in such sources. The paper uses a comparative method, which consists in comparing the contexts of the use of means of expressing imperative semantics. It was found that the verb forms and syntactic constructions expressing this meaning were distributed differently in the texts of different genres: ukaznaja gramota is characterized by the use of the subjunctive and imperative mood and the infinitive with a particle by. The forms of the subjunctive mood and the infinitive without a particle by with 3rd person subject are widely represented in pamjat'. The infinitive with the particle by appears in pamjat' in contexts with the 2nd person, as well as the forms of the subjunctive and imperative mood. Household sources are characterized by a high frequency of imperative mood compared to an infinitive with a particle by. The article presents a quantitative analysis of verb forms and syntactic constructions used to express imperative meaning in texts of different genres.

Middle Russian, infinitive, infinitive with by, imperative mood, subjunctive mood, imperative semantics, source study, clerical office work, business writing, household writing