2025/10/30 by Larysa MARCHYLO, Iryna Dudko · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity #Language and Culture #Literature, Language, and Rhetoric Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.37708/ezs.swu.bg.v23i3.1
openalex publication_date 2025/10/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
The article is devoted to the study of verb tenses attested in the 17th century records of Volhynia and Dnieper Ukraine. These documents contain valuable material for researching the history of the formation of the grammatical system of the Ukrainian language. The article analyses the forms of the present, future, past, and pluperfect tenses of the verb in administrative records. It is found out what variants of affixes have the forms of the present and future simple tense. Different structural varieties of the past tense forms, which are genetically related to the analytical tense form – the perfect – have been identified in the analysed texts. The first type is represented by the analytical forms of the 1sg, 1pl, 2sg, 2pl, the auxiliary verbs in which could have undergone changes compared to the previous period. Both the literary and vernacular varieties of Ukrainian have not preserved such forms. The second type includes forms in which the auxiliary verb in a modified form could be in both post- and preposition in relation to the former participle. These forms are still used in the Ukrainian dialects. The third type includes simple forms with a lost auxiliary verb, which have become normative in the Ukrainian literary language. The cases of use of masculine forms with the suffix -в as part of the past tense form of the analytical finite verb and the increase in the number of examples with this suffix in simple forms are revealed. The variety of forms at one of the stages of development of the Ukrainian language demonstrates the complex process of formation of the grammatical system of the Ukrainian language, in particular especially its tense forms. This provides evidence of the organic combination of written and vernacular forms in the textual material. The thesis according to which the system of finite verb forms of the Ukrainian language has been influenced by the common West Slavic language trends is supported. Taking into consideration that some of the above mentioned documents were created in Volhynia, a territory that is an integral part of the cultural and national life of Ukrainian people and which has not lost its identity during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the study of the functioning verb tense forms in the language of records originated from this region is relevant and contributes to the deepening and clarification of the knowledge about the Ukrainian language of the 17th century.