German sources of Mikhail Lomonosov's Russian grammar: verb tenses system

The aim of the article is to identify the sources of tense classification in the Russian Grammar by M. V. Lomonosov (1757). The relevance of the work is determined by the importance of the Russian Grammar for the further development of Russian grammar description. The novelty is the involvement of hitherto scarcely known sources. In his Russian Grammar, Lomonosov identified several past tenses including three plusquamperfecta. His classification partly went back to the German Grammar by M. Schwanwitz (1730) who was guided by Die deutsche Grammatica... von Charmyntes (1713). Charmyntes developed a model for describing verb tenses suggesting three plusquamperfecta, the second and third ones expressed by the forms of the so-called “double perfect” (doppeltes Perfekt) and “double plusquamperfect” (doppeltes Plusquamperfekt). The article argues that the inclusion of double perfects in the paradigm was an innovation of Die deutsche Grammatica. It is suggested that its author was influenced by the ideas of K. von Stieler and J. G. Schottel. It is pointed out that double perfect forms have been recorded in German since the second half of the XIV century, but grammarians of the XVI and the XVII centuries recommended to avoid them. The eighteenth-century grammarians strongly condemned the use of double perfects. The traced chain of borrowings demonstrates the influence of German grammar on Russian one in the first half of the XVIII century. The conclusion is that Die deutsche Grammatica played a significant role in transferring linguistic knowledge at that period and had an indirect impact on Lomonosov’s Russian Grammar.