Clitics ČI and LI in Dialect of Rogovatoye Village

Traditionally Russian particle li is considered to be either interrogative particle or separative conjunction (li…li, li…ili ‘either…or’). The same basic meanings are described for particle chi in Russian dialects. The present study examines and compares functions of chi and li, co-existing in one idiom, based on data of Rogovatoye village dialect (Belgorod region, Stary Oskol district). We classified sentences with chi and li from corpora of Rogovatoye village dialect using syntactic criteria and showed that the received groups correspond to certain functions of the particles/conjunctions. Distribution of the sentences in these groups shows that chi in Rogovatoye dialect is primarily a particle expressing epistemic modality. Separative conjunction is the most frequent function for li and second most frequent for chi. And none of the particles is purely interrogative. Applying the same criteria, we classified sentences from Corpus of Spiridonova Buda dialect and compared usage of the particles in Rogovatoye and in Spiridonova Buda (Bryansk region, Zlynkov district). In its dialect we noticed variability in pronunciation: chi and ti are possible. Analysis of a few examples of li in Spiridonova Buda dialect showed that it is mot likely borrowed from literary Russian. Positional characteristics of proclitic chi and enclitic li were analyzed using Zalyznyak’s method of studying Old East Slavic enclitics. Data of dictionaries and grammars of languages, where cognates of chi or li exist, was used to compare functions of chi and li in Rogovatoye and Spiridonova Buda dialects with literary East Slavic languages.