«Руська» канцелярська мова у Великому Князівстві Литовському: формування, державний статус, діалектні впливи

Using a complex analysis of linguistic, historical and archeological sources, the author arrives at the conclusion, that the linguistic situation in the Grand Principality of Lithuania (GPL) was determined by political as well as ethno-genetic factors. The article emphasizes that the Belarusian ethnos was formed on the basis of two mutually independent linguistic complexes: the South-Western (Polissian) complex within the present-day Northern supradialect of Ukrainian and the South-Western dialect of Belarusian, on one hand, and, on the other, the North-Eastern one, made up of the Polotsk and Smolensk Krivichs mentioned in chronicles, whose ancestors had been Western Slavs migrating from the Southern Baltic region. Therefore it is the author's contention that at a certain period in the history of the GPL, contrary to what Belarusian scholars claim, there were not two varieties of the standard written language common to all the principality; rather, there existed two official languages: an older one, namely, the Krivich language (existing from the early 14th c., when the Polotsk region was annexed to the GPL, till the late 16th c.) and a more recent one, the «Rusian» language, i.e. the Belarusian-Ukrainian one, which emerged at the end of the 14th c. — in the first three decades of the 15th c., when, during the reign of the Grand Prince Vytautas (1392–1430), the princely and regional chancelleries were established. A detailed account is given by the author of the history and functioning of the both languages. During the 16th c., the Krivichs language gradually lost all its distinctive features, turning into a provincial variety of the official «Rusian» language. The latter's formation was greatly influenced by the language of Volhynian chancelleries, whose scribes could freely travel throughout the entire territory of the GPL (often with their magnates) and so inadvertently disseminated their vernacular's features in official documents. On the contrary, the influence of Galician and Central Ukrainian chancelleries was, in the author's opinion as well as most historians' view, not essential.