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К ВОПРОСУ ОБ ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИИ НЕКОТОРЫХ СЛУЧАЕВ УПОТРЕБЛЕНИЯ СОЧЕТАНИЯ «БЫТИ В ПР. ВР. + -Л-ФОРМА» В ДРЕВНЕЙШИХ РУССКИХ ЛЕТОПИСЯХ
The construction «быти (past tense) + l-form» is usually regarded as a pluperfect form. However, as the material of the oldest Russian chronicles (Hypatian Chronicle, The first Novgorodian Chronicle of Older and Younger recensions, Laurentian Chronicle) shows, there are some examples, where this construction cannot be explained by pluperfect semantics. It can mark: 1) a background situation (Ту бо бѣ Ѡлѣгъ ждалъ его с женою), 2) consecutive action in the narrative chain (и всю нощь пилъ бѣ с дружиною своєю), 3) an action synonymous by the nature of the action to other actions in aorist forms (Изѧслава же Мстиславича язвиша в руку. и свергли и бѧхуть с конѧ. и хотѣша и оубити).
Apparently, the appearance of the construction «быти (past tense) + l-form» in the analyzed contexts can be explained by the fact that it was used not only as a grammatical form of a complex past tense, but also as a free syntactic combination of an existential verb and a participle. Therefore, the semantics that it had was composed of its components. Taking into account the possible interchangeability of aorist and participial forms, as well as the possible synonymy of the -l- form and the -ъš-/- vъš- participles, the participial use of the -l- form in a construction with the verb to be in such use should not seem impossible.