Means of Expressing Permission in the Business Language of the 18th Century

Abstract

Purpose. The aim of the article is to describe the system of means of expressing permission in the language of documents of the 18th century. On the basis of linguistic material extracted from collections of published documents, patterns of expression of permission and their dynamics during the 18th century are revealed.

Results. In the time of Peter the Great, there was an activation of the means of expressing permission inherited from the previous era (constructions with the word volya, the predicative adverb vol'no and adjective volen), and at the same time new ways of expressing permission arose: the verbs dozvolyat'sya, pozvolyat'sya (polonisms), the phrase ne zapreshchat'sya. Later, new models remained in the Russian business language, and those inherited from the prePetrine business language mostly disappeared. Throughout the 18th century, there was a competition between the verbs dozvolyat'sya and pozvolyat'sya. In the Petrine era, the verb moch' also started to be used in documents, but its widespread use begins in the second half of the 18th century.

Conclusion. In the era of the reign of Catherine II, a new period of enrichment of the means of expressing permission began. European (most likely German) calques imet' pravo, imet' vlast', vlasten appeared in the language, of which the calque imet' pravo turned out to be particularly productive. A variety of models for expressing permission had different sources of origin and presented the idea of permission in different ways.