MIKOŁAI KRUSZEWSKI IN THE LANGUAGE SPACE OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The article examines the Ukrainian works in the scientific heritage of Mikołaj Kruszewski in three aspects: biographical, social and scientific. The linguist was born in Volyn in a Polish-German family, where the indigenous Ukrainian population was the majority. He formed his personality in the region, he considered Volyn his native land, and later, working in distant Kazan, he repeatedly came with his family in the summer to rest on his mother’s estate. In those days, Ukraine did not have the status of statehood. They called the country “Little Russia”. The disputable question was whether the Ukrainian language is independent or it is a dialect of the Russian language. The most common terms were “Little Russian dialect” and “Dialect of Rus’ Minor”. Kruszewski used these terms. The scientist applied knowledge of the Ukrainian language and culture for a scientific purpose. In his student essay “Spelis as a form of Russian folk poetry” he referred to Ukrainian works, used the toponyms “Little Russia” and “Volyn province”, included beliefs collected by him in the village of Solotvin. In Kazan Mikołaj Kruszewski studied the phonetic and morphological features of the Ukrainian language. For this purpose, he translated the Lithuanian fairy tale «Who knows better to lie» to the dialect of Solotvino. At the masters exam he received eight assignments on the text of a Ukrainian story from Jan Baudouin de Courtenay. In the works “On “analogy” and “folk etymology” (“Volksеtymologie”)”, “On the question of the guna. A study in the domain of Old Slavic vocalism”, “Üeber die Lautabwechslung”, “An Outline of Lingustic Science” Mikołaj Kruszewski drew on Ukrainian vocabulary to illustrate reflections and conclusions on word formation and phonetics. Ukrainian content in the research of Mikołaj Kruszewski testifies to the author᾽s linguistic erudition and desire, revealing the potential of a non-state language, to put it on a par with other Indo-European languages.