MATERIALS OF DIALECTOLOGICAL PRACTICE AS A SOURCE OF THE STUDY OF MODERN MIDDLE POLISSYA DIALECTS

Abstract

The article confirms the status of the materials of dialectological practice as an important source for the study of Ukrainian dialects from the position of synchrony in general and the study of the modern state of Middle Polissya dialects in particular, given the possibility of recording colloquial speech with the help of various technical devices, which enables its authenticity and reliability. Records of samples of dialectal connected speech, recorded by students of Zhytomyr State University named after Ivan Franko during dialectological practice in 2022–2023 from native speakers of mostly older generations, testify to the preservation of defining dialectal features primarily at the phonetic and morphological levels, which are the most static and undergo the least changes, compared, for example, with the lexical one. The analyzed dialect texts most clearly demonstrate the presence of phonetic features in the realm of vocalism, in particular, the functioning of the sounds of heterogeneous articulation [o] and [e] both in the place of etymological counterparts, and ѣ as a reflex, the absence of [i] and its replacement by other sounds (for example, [i] – in the northern regions Zhytomyr Oblast, [иі] – a bit further south, while the last feature led to a significant number of palatalized sounds, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the presence of dispalatalization of a number of consonant sounds, which has been known in the studied area for a long time. Among the morphological features, the most obvious are the presence of full uncontracted forms of adjectives, pronouns and numerals, truncated forms of adjectives, numerals, pronouns in the masculine singular nominative case, preservation of the ancient ending -e in neuter nouns, the function of the ancient infinitive in -t, etc. At the same time, the materials of dialectological practice actualized a number of problems, which mostly due to extralinguistic factors (the Russian-Ukrainian war, the migration of people from the occupied territories or those where hostilities are ongoing to the territory of Polissya, the migration of the Poleschuks themselves from areas bordering Belarus, the decrease in the number of the autochthonous population, the presence of education in the majority of the inhabitants-speakers etc.) appear every time before dialectologists in the process of collecting speaking material and its subsequent interpretation. In general, the Middle Polissya ethnolinguistic continuum demonstrates durability and continuity in linguistic terms from the most ancient state to the present.