Diglossic nature of spelling dualismin Russian written language of 18th century

The article reviews the problem of the formation of graphic and orthographic norms of Russian written language in the 18th century. In the language of business writing, an orthographic usus was formed, due to the unusual interaction of the book and order traditions. This interaction caused a variation in graphic and orthographic means, which, as a peculiar feature of business language, first opposed to the «civic ordinary dialect», and later to the literary language of a new type - «Slavic Russian». This opposition is reviewed on the material of the Trans-Baikal business writing monuments and «Russian grammar» by Mikhail Lomonosov. The presence of parallel spelling norms has already been characterized in historical Russian studies as the concept of spelling dualism. However, this concept is supplemented in the article by an analysis of the functional opposition of two graphic and orthographic systems within the framework of the diglossic confrontation of two idioms - the clerical usus and the literary language of a new type. In order to avoid arbitrary interpretation of a number of spelling norms of business language as a reflection of phonetic processes in writing, the article sequentially delimits phonetic and graphicorthographic variants. A comparative study allows to make the following conclusions:1) double letters were used in handwritten documents almost until the end of the 18th century, while homophony was eliminated in the first third of the 18th century; 2) in contrast to the language of printed publications, special graphic and orthographic rules were implemented in clerical writing - the spelling of the letters Ь and Ъ, the lack of reflection of consonants softness, associated with the rule of using external letters in the command tradition; 3) in contrast to the language of printed publications, graphic and orthographic means in cursive writing varied according to certain principle of spelling-phonetic andphonemic principles of spelling prefixes and sentences on з/с; words with the suffix -ск- after stems on д/т (-дск-/-тск-/-цк-), forms of verbs -ся in the present and infinitive (-ться/-тся /-тца/-ца), mixing of writing letters ѣ and e .