THE WORD-FORMATION IN “ESSAY OF THE MODERN UKRAINIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE” BY YURIY SHEVELYOV

Abstract

The purpose of the proposed article is to consider the word-forming features of the Ukrainian language in the work of Yuriy Shevelyov “An Outline of the Modern Ukrainian Literary Language” (1951). It is emphasized that the word-form (derivatology) as an independent branch of Linguistics, and not as a component of lexicology or morphology, began to be distinguished thanks to the works of Ivan Kovalyk, who for the first time in Ukrainian linguistics substantiated the need for such a distinction. In the analyzed “Essay” there is no separate section devoted to word creation. Issues of derivation are considered in the section “Word in a sentence (Parts of speech)”. The author describing the grammatical features of parts of speech, draws attention to the creation of new words in the system of each of them: “Nouns prefixes and suffixes”, “Adjectives prefixes and suffixes”, “Word-formation of verbs”, “Word-formation and stress of adverbs”, “Wordformation of exclamations”, “Final remarks about the word-formation in the modern Ukrainian language”. Yuriy Shevelyov characterizes wordforming formants from the point of view of their semantics, productivity/ unproductivity, distinguishes among them living, dead and erased, illustrating with many examples. In addition to the suffix and prefix methods of derivation, word formation is highlighted and its features are described in terms of the creation of words of different partial linguistic affiliations. Attention was also paid to such a peculiar type of compound words as shortened words, and their types were clarified. Emphasis is placed on the fact that many of Yuriy Shevelyov's valid considerations resonate with what is relevant today. First of all, we are talking about the creation of feminitives, which is actively discussed nowadays not only among linguists; about the appropriateness of using names with the suffix -k- to denote processes and actions (such as посадка, підготовка, очистка), etc. In his work Yuriy Shevelyov graded the ways of word-formation from the most primitive and least limited to the most complex and clearly limited. Analyzing the word-formation, Yuriy Shevelyov refers to the works of his predecessors: O. Synyavskyі, O. Kurylo, V. Simovуch, I. Ohiуenko, O. Ogonovskyi, Ye. Rudnytskyi, M. Stanislavskyi, Ye. Hrytsak, etc., scrupulously presenting their works in references. The article briefly describes the system of linguistic terms used in “Essay”, many of which could be returned to modern Ukrainian terminology instead of established foreign language lexemes.