Linguistic Characteristics of Platon Ioseliani's and Dimitri Bakradze's Private letters

Abstract

The paper studies the main linguistic characteristics of the epistolary legacy of the representatives of the first generation of 19th century Georgian scientist-historians - Platon Ioseliani and Dimitri Bakradze. The actuality of the research is determined by the invaluable importance of private letters as documentary genre texts for the history of language, taking into account their specificity - the informal style of writing, the abundance of forms characteristic of spoken language, which provides the best opportunity for comparison with the forms of literary language for future research.48 letters of Platon Iosselin and 36 letters of Dimitri Bakradze have been chosen for analysis.The study of the letters revealed that the language of Plato Ioselian's epistles is heavy and "snarky", often artificial, and the style is official. The linguistic influence of Anton Catholicos is clearly visible. Obviously, the identity of the addressees of the letters, on the one hand, and their purpose, on the other hand, play a certain role in this: Most of the letters are addressed to academician Marie Brose. They are of a scientific nature and serve to provide information to the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg regarding this or that critical issue, although this style of writing was generally characteristic of Platon Ioselian. Thus, Platon Ioseliani linguistically belongs to the older generation, while Dimitri Bakradze belongs to the new one, although there have been revealed the new linguistic models with the first author and the old ones – with the second one.