Feminitives in the Ukrainian Language: the Linguistic and Social context

Abstract

The article highlights the problems of new spelling, in particular, the introduction of feminitives, in social and linguistic aspects. The idea is made that the feminitivization of language is a natural consequence of the Ukrainization of all spheres of social life. The relevance of the topic of our research is due to the incompleteness of linguo-social reflection regarding the assessment and boundaries of the use of feminitives. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to research the feminitization of the Ukrainian language in the linguistic and social aspects, the conditionality of the applied form of feminitives by the phonosemantic context and articulatory performance. A retrospection of spelling developments by Ukrainian linguists is carried out in the projection on the modern update of Ukrainian spelling. The social aspect of the introduction of feminitives is revealed as a manifestation of national identity and gender equality. In the linguistic aspect, the feminitivization of the language is the ordering of morphological and syntactic norms of the Ukrainian language, violated by masculinitives (designation of the female sex by male names). It is noted that the formation of feminitives using this or that suffix has a phonosemantic and contextual conditionality. In addition, an indication of the expediency / inexpediency of using one or another suffix when creating a feminitive should be the compatibility of the sounding of adjacent words, their articulatory performance and tolerance in relation to public opinion. In general, the introduction of feminitives, like the new spelling, is assessed as an adequate response to modern public demands.