Il suffisso verbale -yva-/-iva- in testi slavo-orientali dei secc. XI-XIV

The article focuses on the main uses of secondary imperfective verbs with the suffix -yva-/-iva- in Early East Slavic texts dated 11th-14th centuries. In Laurentian (second half of 14th century) and Ipatian (first half of 15th century) Chronicles and in some birch bark letters dated from the 11th to the 14th centuries, the verbal forms with this suffix are used in all different contexts where the imperfective verbal aspect is required: namely, they are used with iterative or distributive, processual or performative values, as well as with historical present value or after the verb počati (‘to start’). The examples from the above-mentioned texts show a more frequent occurrence of the verbal forms with this suffix in dialogues, that is in passages involving oral communication contexts. Only in the later centuries the suffix will also take the particular function of expressing the “iterative mode of action” (iterativnyj sposob dejstvija) which is maintained in some archaic verbal forms of modern Russian.