UNCHANGEABLE WESTERN POLESIAN LEXEMES

Hryhoryi Arkushyn
Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of History and Culture of Ukrainian, Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University
30-А Vinnichenko St., Lutsk 43021, Ukraine
E-mail: hryhor@ukr.net

Heading: Researches
Language: Ukrainian

Abstract: The comparative analysis of unchangeable lexemes in the literary Ukrainian language and words used in Western Polesian Dialects has been conducted. The collections of texts, which contain the stories of native speakers from three dialect groups of Volyn Polesia, Brest Region and Podlasie, have been served as the source material for the research. Both in the literary and dialect language, all adverbs are unchangeable (not taking into account the formation of degrees of comparison); prepositions, particles, conjunctions and interjections also have been found to be unchangeable, and they represent almost the same number of lexemes in these two language systems, rare borrowings are among them. The results of the analysis enabled us to identify only a few common literary and dialect nouns ‒ ательє, фойє, пані, поні, таксі; other unchangeable words that are borrowings turned out to be simply unnecessary in dialectal speech (for example, амплуа, боа, імброльйо, какаду, Борнео, Пількомайо). Some of the literary unchangeable words, which soon became dialects, have either a full declension paradigm, that is change according to all seven cases (авто, кіно, радіо), or flexions of one or two cases (бюра, депа, за сільпом). The difference between the two language systems (literary and dialect) is in the fact that within the dialects, unchangeable words are not borrowings; these words have been used since time immemorial. In oral dialectal speech unchangeable lexemes have been found among all nominal parts of speech, cf.: nouns ма, бра, спа, дорож, тилілі, шитькі, adjectives рад, глуп, скуп, костян, деревʼян, вишнев, numerals до пʼятдесят, без двісті, більше шістсот, pronouns всяк, жоден, сво, ничо; and they also occur among verbs ‒ хо, не хо, дя, some of the lexemes being used only in the territory of Western Polesia (the noun людя́, the adjective бáйкі). Of the two borrowings from the Polish language ‒ леда and ніц ‒ the former has almost gone out of use, while the latter is being actively used.

Undoubtedly, Western Polesian dialects are no exceptions regarding the presence of the unchangeable words which are nominal parts of speech; therefore more records of dialectal vocabulary usages of all fifteen Ukrainian dialects are necessary in order to identify them.

Keywords: borrowing, unchangeable words, case paradigm, Western Polesian dialects, Volyn Polesia, Brest Region, Podlasie.

LEGEND

• ГБ – Arkushyn, H. (2012). Voices from Brest Region (Texts). 536 p. + DVD. Lutsk (in Ukr.).
• ГВП – Arkushyn, H. (2010). Voices from Volyn Polissya (Texts). 542 p. + 2 DVD. Lutsk (in Ukr.).
• ГП – Arkushyn, H. (2007). Voices from Podlasie (Texts). 536 p. + DVD. Lutsk (in Ukr.).
• HB – Arkushyn, H. (2003). Told as two connected: Folk expressions and riddles from the Western Polesie and the western part of Volhynia. Lublin – Lutsk (in Ukr.).
• СЗГ – Arkushyn, H. (2016). Dictionary of West Polish dialects. XXIV + 648 p. Lutsk (in Ukr.).

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