Morphology and semantics of perfect forms in the Byzantine canonical question-and-answer (ero-tapokriseis) literature

The article examines the functional features of the Greek perfect and the models of its formation on the basis of Byzantine monuments of church canonical literature of the XI-XV centuries. Reference to the texts of Byzantine canonical question-and-answer literature is due to the fact that initially it represented acts of epistolary communication, and therefore proves to be a valuable linguistic source that can give an idea of the Greek language within a certain tradition. The relevance of the work is determined by the research problems aimed at studying the verb tenses. The results of the study show that the perfect is mainly represented by personal forms in the indicative and participles, with the latter being the most viable synthetic perfect forms partially preserved in Modern Greek. The study of the frequency and distribution of the perfect forms showed that even in texts of the same linguistic level, genre and style, there are qualitative and quantitative differences in the use of the perfect forms. In some texts, the average number of the perfect forms is in the range of ~8-11 per 1000 words, while in others this figure is several times lower. It was established that in the studied texts the synthetic perfect functions as aorist, which suggests their semantic interchangeability. At the same time, the periphrastic (analytic) perfect (εἰμί + part. perf.) preserves, although fragmentary, the idea of the effectiveness of an action and is the dominant periphrasis in the said texts. The results of the study of the perfect functions and formation patterns, on the one hand, enable us to characterize the language of the studied monuments and the specific stylistic features of their authors as classicism-oriented, and on the other hand, demonstrate a tendency of this verb category to flatten in the late Byzantine period.