La questione dei clitici nel russo antico. Un contributo fondamentale agli studi linguistici

This article presents a review of A. Zaliznjak's book on enclitic particles in Old Russian (Drevnerusskie enklitiki, Jazyki slavjanskoj kul'tury, Moskva 2008). His research into this extremely rich material, based on rigorous linguistic methodology, allowed him to show the main stages of the evolution of the enclitic system. By comparing documents from different periods, redacted according to the rules of both the literary and the spoken language (zivaja russkaja rec'), the author shows the reciprocal influences of the different styles of text on the distribution of the inflected and uninflected enclitics, according to their hierarchal order. The importance and the originality of this study consist not only in the organisation of the linguistic material, but also - and principally - in the scientific approach to it. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]