The Ukrainian pronouns жаден and жоден in the Slavic context: origin, development, and standardization
Ruslana Kotsa, Candidate of Sciences in Philology, Senior Researcher in the Department of History of the Ukrainian Language and Onomastics
Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
4 Mykhailo Hrushevskyi St., Kyiv 01001, Ukraine
E-mail: rgomonai@ukr.net
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2074-2250
Heading: Articles
Language: Ukrainian
Abstract: The article offers a comprehensive diachronic analysis of the Ukrainian pronominal forms жаден / жадний and жоден / жодний within a broader Slavic perspective. Based on a representative corpus of written sources from the 14th to the 18th centuries, historical lexicographic data, and modern dialectological descriptions, the study reconstructs the main stages of their formal development, semantic change, and eventual standardization.
The paper examines the graphic, phonetic, and morphological variation of these forms and their interaction with analytic models of negation such as ni jedenъ and ni žoden. It is shown that the meaning of full negation (‘not one’) was not originally inherent to these pronouns. In different historical periods and dialectal areas, they could express both negative and generalized quantificational meanings (‘each’, ‘every’). Special attention is paid to areal differentiation between forms with the root vowels [a] and [o] and to the preservation of earlier semantic patterns in the dialects of the South-Eastern Ukrainian dialect continuum.
In a comparative perspective, the Ukrainian material is juxtaposed with data from West Slavic and Belarusian languages, including Old Czech and Old Polish, which allows for refining competing etymological hypotheses and outlining common and divergent paths of the grammaticalization of negation in Slavic. The analysis also addresses constructions such as i jeden, nijeden, and ni žadny and their role in the development of negative pronominal paradigms.
The study argues that the modern Ukrainian standard form жоден, codified in the mid-20th century, represents the final stage of a long-term internal linguistic process of semantic specialization and supra-dialectal selection rather than the result of a simple replacement of жаден. Conversely, the form жаден / жадний reflects deeper areal roots and preserves traces of earlier stages in the development of the Ukrainian pronominal system.
Keywords: Ukrainian language, definite pronouns, жаден, жодний, жоден, etymology, codification.
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Received 09.01.2026 Аpproved 19.03.2026 Рublished 00.00.2026