CRITERIA FOR DETERMINATION OF MORPHOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN UKRAINIAN LINGUISTICS

Abstract

The article presents different views on the interpretation of the term “variant” and the interpretation of the term “variant of the word”. Different classifications of word variants are described (accentual, phonetic, orthoepic, orthographic, word-forming, grammatical, the latter of which linguists identify with morphological ones or divide them into morphological and syntactic). Among the various classifications of word variants, morphological variants are thoroughly analyzed and the following features are singled out: forms of the same word; identity of lexical and grammatical meaning; the presence of a common or variant word basis (братові/брату – common form, золотім/ золотому – variant form); the presence of variant inflections (нова/новая); the presence of word-forming suffixes (ім’ям–іменем); unequal distribution in the styles of literary language; interchangeability in the same position. Other factors that may cause morphological variability are indicated, in particular: the change of word-change basis and inflections (сльозами–слізьми), accentuation changes (стола–столу), phonetic and accentuation changes (на тоці–на току), change of the lexical meaning of the words (духу–духа, каменю–каменя), variation of the grammatical category of the gender with variable or invariant form of the word (зал masc.gender – зала femin. gender – does not require context, купіль – masc. and femin. – does need context), variation of forms of the same gender (вовкулак masc. gender – вовкулака masc. gender, постіль femin. gender – постеля femin. gender). It is noted that linguists of the second half of the twentieth century used different terms to denote common-root formations with identical meaning and some variations of form, namely: parallel forms, variant endings, parallel endings, parallel grammatical forms, morphological variants, variant formations, variant forms, etc. It also points to the controversial issue in Ukrainian linguistics about the distinction between the concepts of “parallel form”, “doublet” and “variant” and the appropriateness of using the term “variant”, which most fully expresses the essence of the phenomenon of language variation . The practicality of using the term “variants of word forms” in the case of morphological variance is stated. Additionally, the concepts of “morphological variance”, “word variance”, “variants of word forms” are interpreted as synonyms.