ACADEMIC JOURNAL
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ISSN 2542-1077 (Print) ISSN 1994-5973 (Online) |
Russian language. Languages of the peoples of Russia |
Kulebakina A. A. | Saint Petersburg State University |
Keywords: imperativeness statute history of business Russian business language of 18th century Catherine the Great’s era |
Summary: The tasks of official documents of the 18th century included the regulation of the employees’ activities
in a particular sphere of public life and the transmission of state values. This was the reason for the careful selection of
linguistic means. In the era of Catherine the Great, the language of documents was changed. These changes were as-
sociated, on the one hand, with the leaving from the traditions of the language of the 17th century, and on the other hand,
with the strengthening of the influence of European languages. The article examines linguistic means for expressing
imperativeness and analyzes its use cases in the text of 1782 Deanery Charter. The performed analysis demonstrates a
linguistic convergence of the text of the charter with European language models. Along with the independent infinitive,
imperativeness is expressed through verbs in the present tense, modifiers dolzhen ‘must’ and objazan ‘be obliged’ in
combination with the infinitive. A two-part sentence model was spread in the text of the charter. Some syntactic con-
structions that were widely used in the era of Peter the Great were becoming less common and are being replaced. The softened tonality of the document is noted. It is assumed that the reasons for these changes could be due to the influence of the sources underlying the charter, as well as the influence of the philosophical and legal ideas of “enlightened absolutism”. |
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