Semantics and syntactic roles of the function word ati/oti in Old East Slavic texts

Anna Ptentsova
Lomonosov Moscow State University / Shenzhen MSU-BIT University / Vinogradov Russian Language Institute RAS / Institute of Linguistics RAS

Abstract: In this article I go into the structure of the polysemy of the Old East Slavic function word ati and its variant oti on the base of original texts from OES subcorpus and the subcorpus of Birch bark letters of the Russian National Corpus. In these texts the regarded word can function as an optative particle, as a conjunction of the purpose, as a conjunction of complement clauses and as a conditional conjunction. The range of usages of the ati/oti appears to be wider than one described in OES dictionaries. Sometimes we can identify the meaning of these lexemes uniquely and in other cases the meaning lies between labeled semantic categories. It seems to be possible to describe the sequence of semantic changes. It should be assumed following A.A. Zaliznyak that ati, which arose from the fusion of function words a and ti, could express initially the optative and conditional meanings (introduced on the first step by the function word a, while ti performed an intensifying function); then the optative ati turned into a conjunction of the purpose and compliment clauses. Oti, apparently, was not a separate function word synonymous with ati, but was a variant of ati with a vowel at the beginning that was more natural for the spoken Old East Slavic language. In the material studied there is no recorded use of it in a conditional meaning (rare for ati as well). On the other hand, the o-variant turns out to be more preferable for texts of Novgorod origin - despite the fact that in texts associated with other zones of the East Slavic area, the a-variant is more common.

Keywords: lexical semantics, function words, Optative, Old East Slavic, Russian National Corpus

For citation: Ptentsova A. Semantics and syntactic roles of the function word ati/oti in Old East Slavic texts. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2023. Vol. 6, iss. 2. Pp. 73–91. (In Rus.) doi:10.37632/PI.2023.76.55.004