Die trat/torot-Lexeme in den altrussischen Chroniken: Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte derrussischen Literatursprache by Gerta Hüttl-FolterReview by: H. LeemingThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 104-105Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4209035 .

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Reviews Hiittl-Folter, Gerta. Die trat/torot-Lexeme in den altrussischen Chroniken: Ein

Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte der russischen Literatursprache. Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse, 420. Osterreichische Akade- mie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, I983. 390 pp. Tables. Bibliography. Word-Index. DM 8o.oo.

How strange that from a seat of learning where a prominently displayed bust of Sigmund Freud stares out in mute incomprehension at the doings of his fellow men there should come a work which so exemplifies the academic optimist's unwarranted presumption that human behaviour, in speech and writing as in other activities, is capable of rational explanation. Of course most researchers are by vocation and character optimists, approaching their task with strong hopes of making some new and useful discovery. Outside observers, sharing neither the commitment nor the optimism, cannot suppress doubt nor suspend disbelief. No doubt Gerta Hiittl-Folter herself appreciates this as well as anybody else, and will therefore forgive those who cannot go with her all the way, and may stumble at obstacles which she has managed to overcome. These are, first, the acceptance of the principle that occurrences of Church Slavonic forms and native East Slavonic pleophonic forms are in the vast majority of cases capable of systematic explanation, and, secondly, that deductions for scribal practice in the eleventh century may be based on the evidence of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources. An example of the procedure may be seen in the treatment of two occurrences of norov against the more frequent nrav; the choice of pleophonic form is explained as intentionally demeaning heathen (HOpOBbI riO-raHbCKH ia) and Judaic (EBpt)H ... CBOIa HOpOBbI) practices. Professor Hiittl-Folter backs up her interpretation with a statement by T. N. Kandaurova, a Soviet scholar who has written several contributions to the problem, to the effect that Russian Church Slavonic sources confine norov to the heathen and nrav to the Christian context. But Svjatoslav's Izbornik of I 076 has no example of the Church Slavonic form, and uses norov on a number of occasions in a positive Christian sense: Ao6pbI-a HOpOBbI (f. 45, line 5); of the seven other occurrences of the plural, four are used in a positive, two in a negative, and one in a neutral sense (ff. 6, 7 bis, 33; 84, 256; 28). Although there is some semantic divergence between the chronicler's usage ('practices, rites') and the Izbornik ('habits' and in the neutral context 'characters'), the evidence of the latter casts doubt on the occurrence in the lost eleventh-century Primary Chronicle of the Church Slavonic nravy, found in the Archaeographical Commission's fifteenth- century manuscript copy of the First Novgorod Chronicle, where the Laurentian codex prefers norovy.

However, even readers who suspect the validity of the 'flash-back technique' will be grateful for this survey of the intrusion of East Slavonic forms into the essentially Church Slavonic text of the Old Russian chronicles. After an introduction covering the linguistic situation in Kievan Rus' which Professor Hiittl-Folter understands as diglossia with high and

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REVIEWS I05

low variants of the same language, and pointing to such early examples of code-switching as BOAOAHMHpa and HoBtropoAt in Deacon Gregory's colophon to the Ostromir Gospel Book, the author proceeds to a linguistic analysis, based on distinctive Church Slavonic and Old Russian features, of Nestor's Chronicle, as preserved in the Laurentian Codex of I 377. A table is given, showing the topic and the religious or secular nature of each thematic unit, together with the statistics for distinctive frequency which fix the idiom on a scale ranging from 'pure Church Slavonic' down to 'predomi- nantly Old Russian'. Only Vladimir Monomakh's autobiography is given without qualification the latter label. With great subtlety the author argues that only freely interchangeable forms allowing a stylistic choice should be taken into account. By removing from consideration forty-one pleophonic forms which are predetermined by lexical, semantic or other factors, she is able to promote certain passages to higher points on the scale of codes. The eighty-one remaining fully interchangeable trat/torot pairs are regarded as a proper basis for analysis. This bring us to the heart of the matter: a demonstration that the native form was chosen as more fitting in certain contexts, such as direct speech, realistic description, reference to East Slavs, Varangians or Russian territory. Special attention is paid to direct speech. It is shown that the frequency of pleophonic forms is in inverse proportion to the rank of the speaker. Here, as in a later discussion of 'secondary variations', Professor Huittl-Folter deploys diverse ingenious, but by the nature of things, ad hoc and post hoc arguments.

Wishing to bring the Primary Chronicle in for comparative purposes the author is forced to employ a fifteenth-century manuscript as proxy; comparison with the Laurentian Codex shows a greatly reduced incidence of pleophonic forms. The inclusion of'Nacal'nyj svod' in the bibliography of sources is misleading; discretion here demands at least the use of square brackets and it would on the whole have been better to omit it completely from what is otherwise a list of sources available in print. In spite of the reservations already expressed, there is no questioning the great value of this work, especially the full commentary to the materials of the Laurentian Codex and the well presented comparative data from other sources. The book is well produced, with excellent typography, clearly laid out tables, and few misprints (t3opoqbe, p. 58; eCTeTCTBeHHoe, p. I8); the references on p. I63 to Izbornik Svjatoslava and Nomokanon could have been more precise.

London H. LEEMING

Hungaro-Slavica, I983: IX. Internationaler Slavistenkongress, Kiev, 6.-I3. September I983. Edited by L. Hadrovics, A. Hollos. Slavistische For- schungen, 43. Bohlau, Cologne, Vienna, I 983. 356 pp. References.

THE subjects dealt with in this collection of Hungarian papers for the Ninth International Congress of Slavists fall approximately into historical, literary, and linguistic categories, with a predominance of literary themes. There are only two historical papers: M. F. Font, on political relations

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