고대북부러시아방언 be-조동사의 접어 분석 비판

On the Clitic Analysis of the Be-auxiliary in Old North Russian

This paper examines the morphosyntactic status of the l-perfect auxiliary (byti ‘be’) in Old North Russian, focusing on whether this category can be construed as a second position enclitic, as it has been suggested in the literature. Based on the auxiliary’s phonological, morphological, and syntactic features reflected in manuscripts, such as Old Novgorodian birch bark letters, I argue that the Old North Russian be-auxiliary is not a full-pledged clitic but should rather be identified as a weak pronoun. I also account for the auxiliary’s position right adjacent to pronominal clitics by proposing that the auxiliary remains where it first merges in the structure, not raising to a functional head. I propose that the auxiliary in situ is best explained by D-feature lowering or the lack of V-to-Infl movement in this language, which is also supported by the lack of V-to-Infl movement in Modern Russian.