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The Development of Non-Verbal Sentences in the Birchbark Letters of Novgorod : Copula, Auxiliary and Person Marker The verb 'be', copula or auxiliary, is almost constantly absent in normal speech for the third person in Old Novgorodian. For the first and second persons, 'be' is expressed when there is no subject pronoun, absent when there is a subject pronoun. When 'be' and a subject pronoun are found together, there is a clear emphasis. This complementary distribution shows that 'be' is, as the personal pronoun, a person marker, and does not function any longer as a verb. The personal pronoun is the strongest person marker, the copula / auxiliary the weakest: the usual variant in the llth and 12th centuries is далъ есмь, виноватъ есмь (copula-auxiliary / no pronoun), and the variant а далъ, а виноватъ (pronoun / no copula-auxiliary) is used when there is an emphasis on the subject, it is the marked variant. This explains the existence of periphrastic forms ('conditional 2'or pluperfect) with the auxiliary where it should not appear. It is also argued that the development of non-verbal sentences, which is usually ascribed to Finno-Ugric influence, is in part due to this state of affairs : since non-verbal sentences did exist in Indo-European languages, this type was inherited in Slavic, but in Russian the marked variant (pronoun / no copula-auxiliary) was generalized and became the unmarked one. The internal dynamic of change seems to be an important part of this evolution, all the more so since in the Novgorod area, the substratum is Fennic, and Fennic languages, alone in the Finno-Ugric languages, have a copula and an auxiliary for compound tenses, which they acquired under the influence of neighbouring Indo-European languages: this makes it difficult to ascribe the Old Novgorodian facts to Fennic influence.

On the Russian Fag End of the World and Its Three-Nine Native Lands The enigmatic Russian (and Baltic) tridevjať remains until now much of a mystery. It can be found in Eastern Slavic texts as early as the beginning of the 14th century. Most of the authors link it to another 'abnormaľ form: devjanosto and conclude that there probably existed 'an ancient reckoning system on base nine'. However, since nothing can give evidence of it in Indo-European languages, this tridevjat looks much like a loan, or a calque. Turkic toguz (9) could, at first sight, be considered a plausible matrix for it but ultimately proves to be a mere specifier. More convincingly Nenetz - a language in which 9 is 'native ju''' and has been later replaced by 'Russian ju"' meaning 10 - could yield the clue to the enigma, suggesting that the Novgo- rodian uškujniki were those who introduced this expression further South. Be it as it may. But this isolated numeral, strictly limited to a few idiomatic set expressions, does most probably not imply the existence of a fully fledged reckoning system on base 9. The emphasis laid on the penultimate numbers of the two series (units and tens) rather suggests, as far as the signifier is concerned, that in civilizations with no writing system, these numbers may have played the role of an acoustic signal (warning about the near end of a series), much similar to the visual signal played by zero in civilizations based on writing. On the whole - primitive, mnemonic counting tradition in use among tradesmen, based on 'sets' and 'wholes' rather than on isolated, listed units - but a system in which, as far as the signified is concerned, the ultimate unit - making ten - remains included into the series and completes it.

The 'Skobeev Case' (May 1722): or the Secret Chancery as a Possible Source of the History of Frol Skobeev While a majority of specialists holds that the Russian novel Povesť о Frôle Skobeeve dates from the late 17 C, a few influent scholars consider it nevertheless as a typical example of 'Petrine' tale, which could have been written between 1710 and 1722. This latter opinion may find some support in additional facts provided by the details of a minor case of lese-majesty investigated by Peter the Great's Secret Chancery in 1722. A gentleman of very small fortune from the district of Borovsk, one Timofej Skobeev, living on his estate of Frolovskoe, was reported by his servant to have, in a state of intoxication, used slanderous language with respect to the Tsar in the course of a domestic quarrel, which took place shortly before Christmas 1721. Skobeev confessed to the facts and received a sentence of drubbing, while his slave servant was rewarded with emancipation for reporting the crime. The Skobeev case went no further, but there are suggestions that it may have inspired one of the Chancery clerks with the idea of the well-known novel, where the hero, also called Skobeev, was christened Frol and endowed with an estate not much better than that of the gentleman from the Borovsk district. The story is that of the successful marriage, which he manages to conclude by taking advantage both of the candour of the bride-to-be and of the greed and the drunkenness of her father's servants. Together with these similarities of names and situations, it is to be noted that the language used in the novel meets most of the standards of the so-called 'Chancery style' (prikaznoj jazyk) then in use. The article contains an unabridged publication of the inquiry conducted in the Timofei Skobeev case and a study of the parallels to be drawn between these facts and the Povesť o Frôle Skobeeve.