Das Ukrainische als Kirchensprache. (Ukrains'ka mova v tserkvakh) by Michael s> Moser (review)

Abstract

SEER,Vol. 84,No.4, October 2006 Reviews Moser, Michael (ed.). Das Ukrainische als Kirchensprache. (Ukrains'ka movav tserkvakh). SlavischeSprachgeschichte,i. LIT Verlag, Munster,Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna and London, 2005. 4I6 pp. ?39.90. THE collection of essaysunder reviewheraldstwo importantevents in modern Slavic studies. First, this collection was published as the first volume in a newly-foundedLIT Verlag seriesdedicatedto the historyof Slavic languages. Second, as pointed out by the editor (p.7), the book is a culmination of a three-year cooperation of scholars from the Institute of Slavic Studies at Vienna University (Michael Moser, principle co-ordinator) and from the Institute of Ukrainian Language (Vasyl' Nimcuk, co-ordinator) within a researchprojectsponsoredby the federalEndowmentfor the Advancementof Scholarly Research (Fonds zur Forderungder wissenschaftlichenForschung, FWF). A short review can hardly do justice to all the essays in this voluminous book. Different in scope and methods though, they all treat Ukrainian as a church language approached diachronically and synchronically. Special emphasis is placed on a series of related questions, in particularthe coexistence of Ukrainianwith (Old)Church Slavonic and its competence with other national languages,Russian and Polishas liturgicallanguages (p. ii). The first contribution by Vasyl' Nimcuk leads off with a comprehensive overview of Ukrainiantranslationsof the Holy Scriptures(pp. 15-64). He startshis survey with the Peresopnycja Gospel, translated in I556-6i, the Volhynian Arian Valentyn Nehalevs'kyj's [Niegaliewski]translationfrom the Polish Gospel in I58i, and the Krechiv Apostol (I563-72) (P. 23 ff.). The author finds it difficult to ascertain,however, the exact chronology and geography of Middle Ukrainian translations.He gives specialattentionto the firsttranslation(i860-62) of the New Testament into the new Ukrainian standard language by Pylyp Moracevs'kyj,published posthumously in I906-I9II, and translationsof the New Testament (i88o) and the Bible (I903) by PantelejmonKulis, Ivan Puljuj, and Ivan Necuj-Levyc'kyj.Their influenceon the developmentof 'the confessional style'of the new Ukrainianstandardlanguagewas significant(p. 32). In thisrespect,of utmost importanceare also the second and thirdtranslationsof the Bible, made by Ivan Ohijenko in I940 (firstpublished in I962) and Ivan Chomenko in I963 (PP. 41-44). The fourth translationwas initiated by the Ukrainian Biblical Society in 1992-93, albeit the project has not been completed yet. The authormaintains,and rightlyso, that the previoustranslations were the most significantcontributionsto the formationof the new Ukrainian standardlanguage, especially as compared with modern secular or regional (e.g. Lemkian)translations(pp.57-60). A remarkably long and informative essay, 'The Ostroh Academy and Printing House (1576/77-I636)', of Juliane Besters-Dilger(pp.65-I50) offers an all-encompassingstudy of the language of the Academy in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries (p. 67). The author tries to determine 744 SEER, 84, 4, 2006 if there were in use any 'local norms' of theprostaja mova and Church Slavonic in Ostroh and, if any, what were their relations in the literary output of the Academy (p. 68). Drawing primarily on her Ukrainian predecessors' description,supplementedby her own researchin the librariesof L'viv, Kyiv, Moscow and Oxford, Besters-Dilgerprovides a detailed list of the originalor translatedtexts (primers,writings of holy fathers, anthologies, sermons, etc.), published in Ostroh or prepared for publication in other places; there is a separategroup of textswhich have not been extant from that time (pp.83-91]). Having analysed most representativetexts, Besters-Dilgerascribes to the prostaja mova,a 'mixed' or 'artificiallanguage', with a heavy Polish admixture (pp. 102, 104), a set of stable phonetic, morphological, and syntactic traits (pp. 142-44). Unlike Pavlo Zytec'kyj and A. Nazarevskij (incidentally, not cited by the author),as well as Nikita Tolstoj and Michael Moser, the author posits a rather moderate influence of Polish on prepositions, conjunctions, particles, the predicative instrumentaland some other patterns in the prostyj syntax (ib.).The phonological and morphologicalfeaturesof the prostaja mova, as used in Ostroh, tend to relate this language to the Middle Russian administrativelanguage (theprikaznyj jazyk)(ib). However, the interpretationof the prostaja movaas an alleged 'amalgam of Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Church Slavonic' (p. I03) is open to doubt. The author does not mention a single Belarusian element in the make-up of this 'artificiallanguage'. The reader, therefore, is at a loss as to what extent the local variant of the...