ИСТИНА

I start from brief definitions of 'linguistics', 'semiotics' and 'l-linguistics', i.e. 'linguistics of a special kind' and go over to the description of the Old Russian discourse particle TI 1 'really', 'surely', 'indeed'. This particle was discovered by Andrej A. Zaliznjak in 1993, who dubbed it 'enhanced marker of indicativity', but did not provide a proper lexicographic description of this discourse item. I argue that while Zaliznjak's syntactic diagnostics based on this element's position in clitic clusters is correct, the tag provided by him is incorrect, since TI 1 combines with optative mood and can refer to hypothetical and even counterfactual states of affairs. The parallel with Arabic 'inna is not accurate either, since 'inna occurs only in nominal clauses, while TI1 can freely occur in copular and verbal clauses. I argue that TI 1 is a verification marker.