3. The Main Registers of the Bookish Language and the Processes of Their Formation

The reconceptualization of genetically heterogeneous elements in functional categories also influenced the character of linguistic consciousness. The bookish language was perceived not as an alien tongue that existed independently of the native language (in contrast to Latin) but as a cultivated variety of it. The mastery of the bookish language was superimposed onto native linguistic ways and united with them, forming the complex conglomerate of the speech habits of the written language whose concrete content depended both on the social and cultural status of the writer as well as on the type of written texts that he usually produced (these are understandably connected). Differing writing habits that primarily come from reading create different written traditions that have dissimilar cultural (and religious) importance. Linguistic phenomena that are characteristic of each of the written traditions (registers) acquire the same cultural weight as the tradition as a whole, and this significantly defines their role in the creation of the new type of literary language.