Relative free-choice pronoun iže kъto in Old Russian

The article traces the history of the compound relative pronoun iže kъto ‘anyone who, whoever’ which has not been described in the historical grammars of the Russian language. Etymologically and structurally it is identical to the Greek pronoun ὅς τις (ὅστις) ‘anyone who, whoever’ and its Indo-Iranian cognates (Ved. yád cit ‘whatever’ etc.) < i. e. *(H)yós kwis ‘anyone who’. The reflexes of *(H)yós kwis in Indo-European languages were used in generic and habitual contexts. In medieval Slavonic texts iže kъto is rare. In Old Church Slavonic and Old Bulgarian writings it appears as an equivalent of the Greek ὅστις. The importance of the East Slavic evidence lies in the fact that, with few exceptions, the pronoun iže kъto occurs in original texts not influenced by foreign-language models. In Old Russian, iže kъto is used in not particularly literary texts. During the Middle Russian period, when iže becomes a highly literary word, the pronoun iže kъto also starts to be perceived as Church Slavonicism. During the 18th century, iže was completely ousted into the domain of Church Slavonic and iže kъto fell out of use.