In this study has its subject on usage of verbs of the 17th century Church Slavic and Russian language shown in The Correct Syntax of Slavonic Grammar (1619) written by Meletius Smotrytsky, a native Russian speaker and Grammatica Russica (1696) written by Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf, a non-native speaker. And it examined the aspect of recognition of the usage of verbs and establishment pattern as a grammatical system focusing on the grammatical category and description method.
First, with regard to the method of description of grammar, it may be due to the Smotrytsky’s description which is taxonomy-centric and system-centric as it follows Greek and Latin traditions, but it could be understood that it is a result of his efforts to systemize Church Slavic verbs as a native speaker. In fact, the purpose of writing his grammar book was not to observe the uses of the Russian language at the time and make inductive reasonings, but to establish a standardized grammar that can be used for school education, book publishing, and translation experts. On the other hand, Ludolf veered away from the theoretical definition of Russian verbs and descriptions of the grammar that is taxonomy-centric, and aimed to construct a practical grammar that summarizes major grammatical categories directly related to daily Russian learning. In this context, it is necessary to look at the grammatical systems constructed by the two authors to describe the verb system.
To begin, the grammatical attributes with systematic differences between grammar books can be organized into voice, number, mood, tense, and gender. And the grammatical attributes with shared terms but grammatical attributes with different application patterns are categorization of irregular verb conjugations. Above all, the two books focus mostly on the tense. And on one hand, as a new approach for tense formation method, and the other as a way to solidify the verb definitions, various views of the inflection and semantic change functions of suffixes and prefixes were reflected in Church Slavic and Russian verb systems. Considering that the study of Russian aspects and aspectual pairs began in the turn of the 19th century, the significance of the study of verbs in the 17th century can be reexamined.