On the origin and history of the function word anъ / ano

The article, based on data from the Russian National Corpus, describes the semantics of the function word anъ (ano) — the 'ancestor' of the modern connector an. In the Old East Slavic period, the most frequent usage of anъ (ano) was in an adversative meaning; in addition, the connector was used in causal and demonstrative-emphatic meanings. These meanings are also regularly attested in texts from the Middle Russian period; the adversative anъ (ano) in the vast majority of cases exhibits an additional semantic component of 'violation of expectations.' In texts from the 18th–19th centuries in the Russian National Corpus, the demonstrative-emphatic and adversative meanings remain highly frequent; the adversative anъ
begins to be actively used as the first element in dialogic response turns. In texts from this period, the demonstrative-emphatic anъ may acquire the component of 'suddenness of a situation's occurrence.' The 'violation of expectations' component becomes obligatory for the adversative anъ. As for the question of the origin of anъ (ano), the most plausible hypothesis appears to be that this function word resulted from the contamination of two originally independent units: an adversative one, derived from *a + nъ (no), and a demonstrative one, derived from *a + ono. However, it should be noted that tracing anъ (ano) in all its meanings back to a demonstrative semantics also seems a viable solution.