Language and Communication

Chapter 7 Language and Communication The second line of one of the oldest surviving birchbark letters, n247 (ca. 1025– 1050; see Section II.3), which was found in 1956, reads in transliteration as follows: azamъkekěleadvьrikělěagospodarьvъnetjažěneděe This sequence of letters caused considerable headaches for the authors of the fifth volume of the diplomatic edition of the birchbark finds (1963).1 Of course, it does not help that there are no word divisions, which is usual in medieval texts. However, it becomes really problematic when we do not know the mean- ing of words or when case endings are unclear. Grappling with these dilemmas, the authors proposed the following reading: A zamъke kělea, dvьri kělěa. A gospodarь vъ netjažě, neděe. Unfortunately, this reading could not be understood in any coherent way; it assumed grammatical incongruities and the interpretation as a whole made little or no sense: ‘the lock of the (monastery) cell, the doors of the cell. And the owner is lazy, does nothing.’ It was only in the 1980s that linguistic knowledge of Old Novgorodian reached a point where the given passage, as well as many others in the corpus, could be properly understood. In the corrected readings from 1986 and 1993, the second line of n247 is read as follows:2 A zamъke kěle a dvьri kělě. A gospodarь vъ ne tjažě ne děe. This reading is easy to understand: ‘But the lock is intact, the door is intact, and the master for that reason is not pursuing damages.’ This fits in perfectly with the content of the rest of the text, and n247 thus turned out to be a coherent report of a judicial investigation. The key to the new interpretation was the realization that the word kěl- was not a mistake for kelija ‘monastic cell’, but rather the normal Old Novgorod dialectal reflex of the Common Slavic 1 ngb v (69–71). 2 See ngb viii (111–112, 240), ix (149). © KoninklijkeBrillNV,Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004389427_009 LanguageandCommunication 49 root for ‘whole’, which in other dialects of Old East Slavic (and, in fact, in any other Slavic language) would have been cěl-.3 Likewise, the case endings in kěle, zamъke and kělě, which had been misunderstood in 1963, proved to be the expected Old Novgorod forms.4 The reanalysis of the rest of the line showed that the correct word division was different from the initial reading; there sim- ply was no ‘lazy owner’ in the picture. The Old Novgorod dialect reflected in birchbark letters often differs strik- ingly from the language of Old East Slavic parchment texts. The latter were mainly written in an East Slavic variant of Church Slavonic, with many features stemming from the South Slavic dialects of the Balkans. Generally speak- ing, medieval Church Slavonic texts, which had restricted functions, provide little information about the actual variation and usage of East Slavic dialects of the time. Moreover, Old Novgorodian is markedly different from the dialects of other regions. Located on the northern periphery of the Slavic linguistic zone, and influenced by non-Slavic languages (Baltic and, most importantly, Baltic Finnic), Old Novgorodian developed in a way that distinguished it from all the other Slavic dialects. By now, the grammar of Old Novgorodian has been largely mapped out, and its unique features are generally well understood.5 The peculiar orthography of most birchbark letters, with its frequent interchange of certain sets of vowel 3 In historical phonological terms, this Old Novgorod phenomenon is called the absence of the effects of the second (regressive) palatalization of velars. See Nesset (2015, 293–295) for a basic explanation (with reference to n247) and a brief discussion of different explanatory scenarios that have been proposed (in particular Bjørnflaten 1990, 324–329; 1995, 45–48; Vermeer 2000, 17–22). 4 Nominative singular masculine forms of the so-called o-stem, ending in -e in the case of kěle and zamъke (instead of -ъ everywhere else in Slavic), and the nominative plural feminine form of the so-called ā-stem, ending in -ě in the case of kělě (instead of -y elsewhere). See Nesset (2015, 296–299) for basic comments on these two morphological phenomena (with reference to n247). 5 See dnd (11–226) for Zaliznjak’s comprehensive grammatical sketch of the Old Novgorod dialect, which covers (historical) phonology (and underlying orthographic conventions), morphology, and the main syntactic and lexical peculiarities. For the paleographic aspects of the birchbark corpus, see Zaliznjak’s detailed description in ngb x (133–429). Additionally, articles in English and other Western European languages on the Old Novgorod dialect (mainly concerning historical phonology and morphology, but also the verbal system and occasion- ally syntax and orthography) include a series of articles by Vermeer (1986; 1991a; 1991b; 1992; 1994; 1995; 1996; 1997a; 1997b; 1999; 2000; 2003) as well as Worth (1982; 1984b; 1996), Klenin (1989), Sjöberg (1990), Bjørnflaten (1990; 1995; 2000; 2006), Birnbaum (1991; 1996b), Le Feuvre (1993; 1998; 1999), Nørgård-Sørensen (1997a; 1997b; 2015), Mendoza (2002), Andersen (2006), Nuorluoto (2007), Kwon (2009; 2016), Majer (2014). Also, see the bibliography in dnd (847– 861) for some older or more general articles pertaining to the Old Novgorod dialect..

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