Approximative inversion in Old Russian

[Michael Yadroff]

Dear SEELANGers,
a minute ago I subscribed to this list to post a question for experts in
historical syntax of Russian.

The approximative inversion construction in East Slavic is an
inverted order of a numeral and a "noun" expressing approximative
quantity like in the following example:

(i) tri chasa (no approximation)
(ii) chasa tri 'approximately three hours'

I'm aware of works by Suprun, Mel'chuk, Steve Franks, and Loren Billings
done on this topic (but if someone could point out any other papers - or
whatever -
I'd appreciate it). One of the intriguing facts about this construction is
that it's
only attested in East Slavic, - no other language uses inversion of a
numeral and a "noun"
to express this meaning.

Steve Franks in a section of his book "Parameters of Slavic Morphosyntax"(1995)
[sorry, just now I checked it out and it's not in his book but in his NLLT
paper (1994)
"Parametric properties of Numeral phrases in Slavic"(v.12, #4)]
devoted to the approx. inv. construction in Russian footnoted that the
construction
was first attested in XVIc. referrring to p.c.'s from Wayles Browne and Laurie
Langlois referring in their turn to such sources as Drovnikova (1985)
"Istorija chislitel'nyx
v Russkom jazyke" (Izd-vo DVGU, Vladivostok) and Boguslawski (1966)
"Semantyczne poje,cie liczebnika i jego morfologia w je,zyke rosyjskim"
(just a side note of mine: it's weird but IU Library has the book by
Drovnikava
and not the book by Boguslawski).

Okay, now here is my question:

Working with Old Russian chronicles (in the first place, Lavrent'jevskaja
letopis')
I found a few examples of an inverted order for a numeral and a noun dated to
supposedly XIIIc. or XIVc., like in the following example:

(iii) V se zhe le^to Nove^gorode^ ide Volxov" vspjat' _dnij 5_  (e^ - jat')

My first thought was "Aha! This is an apparent counterexample for a good
theory!"
But the second thought was "Wait! Perhaps it's just a style of writing
numerals in those
times like in dates: goda nnnnnn, ijulja nn, etc.

So, what could it be? Is there any approximative meaning in (iii)?

Thanks a bunch in advance.

Misha

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Michael Yadroff
Linguistics Department  and     Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Memorial Hall 322               Ballantine Hall 502
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
myadroff at indiana.edu
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