Hryhoriy Kvitka-Osnovyanenko as a founder of prose genres of the Ukrainian literary language

Abstract

The article analyzes the role of the creative work of Hryhoriy Kvitka-Osnovyanenko in the formation of the novel Ukrainian literary language. The writer laid the foundations of two linguistic and stylistic trends of Ukrainian literary prose, namely laughing and humorous one thus continuing the Ivan Kotlyarevskyi’s activity, and a new for the Ukrainian literature sentimental one. The article is mainly focused on highlighting the vernacular specificity of the H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko’s stories and novels reflected in phonetic, morphological and syntactic features. The lexical structure of the writer’s language, which is based on the contemporary patois of the Slobozhanshchyna region with Church Slavonicisms and Russianisms inclusions, is studied in detail. The wealth of the synonymous series as well as the high variability of the word forms, which may be explained by the absence of stable norms at the initial stage of the formation of the literary language, are noted. The lexical irregularity and territorial proximity to the Russian dialects areals led to some cases of the parallel use of Ukrainian and Russian lexemes to denote the same realities in the texts of H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko. Searching for linguistic means for the formation of a high style, the writer turned to folklore sources as well as to imitation of contemporary works of the sentimental Russian literature. The results of the study have proved that the folklore sources used by H. KvitkaOsnovyanenko organically complemented the vernacular nature of his works, while the linguistic and stylistic adoptions from the Russian literature broke the homogeneity of the linguistic basis of individual works of the sentimental genre affecting their ideological and thematic solution. However, these drawbacks do not diminish the fundamental importance of the legacy of the first Ukrainian novelist in the history of the Ukrainian literary language. Keywords: Ukrainian literary language, Slobozhanshchyna patois, Church Slavonicisms, Russianisms, lexical variability.