SUT' and EST'
Anton Zimmerling
August 2024 

I discuss the evolution of two members of the present tense paradigm of the verb BE - historical 3SG EST' and historical 3PL SUT'. In Old Russian, overt forms of the 3rd person of BE were primarily used as full verbs, while Middle Russian uses SUT' primarily as a copula. The spreading of the 3SG EST' over the plural made the form SUT' redundant. I argue that non-bookish "wrong" uses of SUT' in other persons and numbers in Middle and Modern Russian can be explained as internal borrowings. The final section explains the origin of the set phrase "NE SUT' VAZHNO". I argue that it has the structure NEG - AUX.PL - ADJ.SG.N with the bookish/Old Church Slavonic adjectival form of Pl.N - a which was incorrectly rendered with -o in vernacular Russian texts of the XIX century.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008339 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Sub speciae aeternitatis. Cб. научных статей к 60-летию В. Б. Крысько / Отв.ред. И.М.Ладыженский, М.А.Пузина. М.: Азбуковник, 2021. C. 278-295.DOI: 10.31912/975-5-91172-215-9/278-295
keywords:	agreement paradigms, tense, copula, content verb, variation, diachrony, syntax, phonology, semantics, morphology
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