Relics of the Dual Category in West Ruthenian Chronicles of the 16th and 17th Centuries

The article is devoted to characterising the forms of the dual documented in two preserved examples of West Ruthenian literature from the 16^th–17^th centuries. They represent the first (Supraśl Chronicle) and last (Bychowiec Chronicle) redactions of the chronicles of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Chronicle literature reflected the state of the living language of that period to a greater extent than religious texts subordinated to the canons of Church Slavonic tradition. The aim of the research was to analyse the degree of preservation of the dual category in relation to the unified Rus’ period. An analogous period of Polish language development was also taken into account. The analysis of dual declensional and conjugational forms excerpted from the text was discussed within three groups: natural pairs, combinations with the numerals dwa-dwie, oba-obie (‘two’, ‘both’), and duality conditioned by context. Despite signs of regression in each of the studied groups, the dual still retained a certain vitality, mainly in the chronologically older Supraśl Chronicle (1519). In the sphere of nominal declension, this was most clearly documented by noun forms in distribution with the numerals dwa-dwie (mainly in Nom/Acc), with feminine formations showing a somewhat greater number of uses than masculine formations. The dual number was preserved in trace amounts in syntactic groups reflecting combinations of nouns with congruent forms of adjectives and pronouns. In conjugation, the dual was preserved in the 3rd person aorist, used as a specific stylistic device in narratives of the past. Analysis of the source material proved that in the 16^th–17^th century period, the dual as a grammatical category expressing pairing/duality showed clear regression, with its role being gradually taken over by the plural.