Exaptation of the Nominal ŭ-Declension in Old Church Slavonic

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to study six substantives that specialists agree belong to the ŭ-declension, and two substantives they agree belong to the o-declension, in order to find out more about the interplay between the two declensions in Old Church Slavonic. This is a period when it is difficult to say if some substantives were ŭ-stem substantives confused with o-declension case endings, or o-stem substantives influenced by the ŭ-declension case endings. 15 biblical and five non-biblical sources (menaea and miscellanies) from the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries have been used as sources for the study. The results were analysed in the light of R. Lass’ theory on exaptation in language, and A. Ch. Vostokov’s thoughts on parallel use of both the ŭ- and o-declension case endings but in different syntactic situations (Vostokov 2007:92 wordlist). In conclusion, even if few occurrences of ŭ-stem substantives with o-declensions case endings were found, these were all from very early sources, and were replaced by the ŭ-declension case endings in later copies.