INFINITIVES AND PARTICIPLES AFTER THE VERB ‘TO THINK’ IN THE PRESLAV TRANSLATION OF JOHN CHRYSOSTOM’S DE STATUIS.

John Chrysostom’s preaching series On the Statues was translated in full into Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) in the 10th century in Preslav and underwent a thorough revision (or a new translation) in the 14th century on Mount Athos. The first complete translation (P) is attested in late Russian copies (16th–17th c.), which have preserved its archaic vocabulary and grammar. The paper focuses on one of its syntactic aspects: the rendering of the so-called declarative infinitives after verbs meaning ‘to think.’ In Greek, verba dicendi et cogitandi can have various complements, the most common being the infinitive or accusativus cum infinitivo. In Old Church Slavonic, declarative infinitives are in competition with subordinate clauses and participles, and it is the latter that is preferred in the text in question (a feature it shares with other translations from the Preslav literary school). This is particularly evident in comparison with the second translation from the 14th century (A), which closely follows its Greek sources and prefers infinitives. The deviations from the grammatical structure of the source text in the Preslav translation are an interesting characteristic feature of the translator’s idiolect and, most importantly, of the language of 10th-century Bulgaria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]