Grammatical adaptation of foreign footwear names in modern Ukrainian Language

Оlena Lavrinets, Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the Department of Ukrainian Language
National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
2 Hryhoriia Skovorody St., Kyiv 04655, Ukraine

E-mail: lavrinets@ukma.edu.ua
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6363-1502

Heading: Articles
Language: Ukrainian

Abstract: Every language, Ukrainian included, comes into contact with other languages. A natural consequence of such contact is the enrichment of its vocabulary with loanwords, which undergo certain changes once they enter the system of the recipient language. The study of the features and criteria of the grammatical adaptation of footwear names in modern Ukrainian is particularly relevant. It allows us to describe in detail the grammatical properties that foreign lexemes have acquired, or are likely to acquire, in the course of adaptation, and to gain deeper insight into how foreign lexemes are assimilated in modern Ukrainian.

The morphological assimilation of footwear names borrowed from genetically unrelated languages, directly or through intermediary languages, begins primarily with the addition of the inflectional ending -и and, less frequently, -і, which express the meaning of a plural denoting a pair. In footwear names that have entered Ukrainian from related languages, directly or through their mediation, the original inflectional ending is retained and transliterated. The use of foreign footwear names as indeclinable nouns is limited in Ukrainian.

Morphologically assimilated names include both long-established and relatively recent loanwords denoting types of footwear. All printed and electronic dictionaries record them as nouns with both singular and plural forms. Some foreign footwear names are recorded only in the plural in all lexicographic sources, or, in some electronic dictionaries, occasionally in both the singular and the plural. This indicates that their morphological adaptation is still in progress. The process will be complete once such a word moves from the class of pluralia tantum nouns to the class of nouns with both singular and plural forms. The newest footwear names were borrowed mostly in the first quarter of the 21st century and are used in current practice exclusively or predominantly as pluralia tantum. They are at the initial stage of morphological assimilation and are not yet recorded in any dictionary of modern Ukrainian. The beginning of their morphological adaptation is signalled by phonetic and orthographic variation, in particular by the emergence of paired indeclinable and declinable variants. Declinable footwear names prevail over indeclinable ones in contemporary colloquial Ukrainian and have the potential to be assimilated more quickly.

The degree to which foreign footwear names have been integrated into the word-formation system is determined by two factors: the number of derivatives formed from them within word-formation clusters and the depth of these clusters. Footwear names with high derivational activity have formed clusters with two or more levels of derivation. These clusters comprise both simple and compound derivatives with modificational and mutational meanings. Medium and low derivational activity is characteristic of footwear names whose clusters have only one level of derivation, filled by derivatives with modificational and/or mutational meanings. Low derivational activity is also typical of some older and newer foreign footwear names. Their derivatives are formed according to productive word-formation patterns of literary Ukrainian but are attested only in the GRAC-19 corpus and in Ukrainian-language advertising posts on Instagram.

Further research could trace the dynamics of the grammatical adaptation of two groups of words: foreign footwear names recorded as pluralia tantum in modern Ukrainian dictionaries, and foreign footwear names that are only now entering the lexical system. It would also be worthwhile to monitor changes in the derivational activity of both older and newer footwear names. The results may be used to standardize the presentation of foreign footwear nouns and their derivatives in dictionaries and grammar reference works.

Keywords: foreign footwear names, grammatical (morphological, derivational) adaptation, noun, donor language, recipient language, language use, derivational activity.

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Received 28.07.2026    Аpproved 14.09.2026  Рublished 02.11.2026