Bogdan Kravtsov

Russian particle ли

When I was a boy I used to not make the inversion in questions with ли particle. In English it could be expressed this way:

— You have pray’d to-night, Desdemona?
William Shakespeare, “Othello”

— But a boy was there? Maybe there was no boy at all?
Maxim Gorky, “Life of Klim Samgin”

— I am a trembling creature or I have the right?
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Crime and Punishment”