Imam’, iměju, imaju, imu: Constructions with Verbs with the Root im-//em- in the 15th Century East Slavic Official Documents

Abstract

The paper discusses the distribution and competition of infinitive constructions with the auxiliary verbs iměti, imati and jati, which have a reference to the future, in the 15th century East Slavic official writing. The verbs iměti and imati in combination with the infinitive could have two paradigms: imam and iměju, imaju and maju, respectively. The verb jati also had forms paronymically similar to the latter (imu, imeši, etc.). This could give rise to interaction between constructions with these auxiliaries. The data for the research was collected from the Middle Russian, Middle Belarusian and Middle Ukrainian official documents since the 15th century. It is argued that in the 15th century Middle Russian writing, there was no unification of the paradigms of iměti and jati. Two clear poles could be distinguished: construction iměti + i nfinitive with the meaning of the future with strong assertion in Church Slavonic writing, and periphrasis jati + infinitive with a phase or general factual meaning in vernacular writing. In the 15^th century Old Belarusian official documents, the auxiliary verb imati/iměti had a set of paradigms imaju/iměju/maju, the paradigm imu, imeši belonging to the verb jati. There was no interaction between iměti and jati, since the maju-paradigm stronlgy prevailed, so that there were no sufficient grounds for confusion. In Old Ukrainian official documents, the use of the constructions in question varied depending on the region. In the Moldavian documents, the rapprochement between iměti and jati was most clearly evident. In the dialects of this territory, the boundary between modal constructions with imati/iměti and the phase one with jati began to blur, which contributed to the expansion of the construction imu + infinitive into the modal domain and its penetration into the contexts of the pure future tense.

DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2025.1.07