Slyshavъ ozhe, reche yako, or On the choice of the objective conjunction in Old Russian texts

The present article is devoted to an investigation of objective conjunctions in the original Old Russian manuscripts. A survey of various non-translated texts from the Old Russian period reveals a wide range of objective conjunctions, including azhe, ako, chto, da, izhe, kako, ozhe, oko, yezhe and yako. The majority of these are not frequently used. The most common objective conjunctions in Old Russian are yako and ozhe. The analysis of the data from the studied texts reveals that the variant yako was employed without any genre or stylistic constraints, thus qualifying as a neutral variant. When ozhe is applicable in a text (with the exception of genres such as hagiography, homiletics, gnomics and pilgrimages), this conjunction displaces yako, particularly in combination with verbs such as 'to see', 'to hear' and 'to know'. yako is most steadily retained with verbs of speech and in various oath contexts (including constructions such as tselovati krьstъ). Two less common conjunctions azhe and kako are distributed in the objective function according to their endings: ka-ko, akin to ya-ko, is predominantly employed with verbs of speech and constructions such as tselovati krьstъ, while a-zhe, akin to o-zhe, is primarily used with verbs 'to hear' and 'to know'.