Dъvoi čepi: On the history of Slavic collective numerals

The article analyzes the material of the monuments of early Slavic writing (Old Church Slavonic, Old Russian, Old Serbian), both books and letters, confi rming the conclusion of A. Vaillant that the numerical collective pronouns dъvoi and oboi could be used in the dual number in constructions denoting the totality of two diff erent objects. Special attention is paid to the reinterpretation of the Novgorod birchbark letter No. 1083 of the 12th century. At the end of the article, we consider examples in which dъvoi and oboi demonstrate the fullness of the number paradigms, and propose their grammatical and semantic classifi cation.