Writing a Syntax of A. M. Kurbskij’s “Novyj Margarit”. The “Anomalous” Adjectival Locative of the Type v domu božiju Revisited

Abstract

This article contains a case study of the syntactic analysis of works written by Prince Andrej Mixajlovič Kurbskij (1528–1583). The case study is devoted to seemingly anomalous adjectival locatives in expressions like v domu božiju ‘in the house of God’ and to their linguistic interpretation in Kurbskij’s East Slavic works, among them especially the “Novyj Margarit” (NM). The NM is a collection of religious writings that predominantly consists of texts translated from Latin into Church Slavonic of the East Slavic recension. The paper illustrates major difficulties in the syntactic analysis of works from the Kurbskij corpus and presents viable solutions. Based on Bounatirou (2018a), a number of issues are further explored or expanded upon in greater detail. Thus, investigating the locative inflection -u such as in v domu božiju, this article also analyses its occurrence in East Slavic literature outside the NM in more detail