A distinctive feature of Modern Standard Ukrainian is its exceptional linguistic variance. It incorporates dialectal variation, extraneous elements and variant forms to a degree that is unparalleled in other modern Slavonic standard languages. We will be looking at three key examples in particular: Firstly, it will be argued that variance stood at the cradle of Modern Standard Ukrainian. These beginnings are routinely associated with the publication of Kotljarevs’kyj’s Aeneid travesty of 1798. Even though in fact firmly rooted in the author’s native south-eastern Poltava dialect, the language shows a significant influx of elements from other dialects and languages. As Kotljarevs’kyj’s new written language spread across the Ukrainian lands, it needed to adapt to speakers of other dialects, particularly those in the west. The second part of the talk will focus on the well known problem of western, Galician elements in Modern Standard Ukrainian which, to the present day, remain a rich source of variance too. Thirdly, the talk will touch on the exceptional number of variant word forms in Modern Standard Ukrainian, verbs in particular. In conclusion, the picture of a language emerges which may lend itself for a laxer form of prescriptivism than is otherwise known in the Slavonic speaking world.
Jan Fellerer studied Russian with Czech and Polish in Vienna, Prague and Cracow and graduated from the University of Vienna in 1995, where he subsequently held a position as university assistant and was involved in various research projects particularly on the language question in the Habsburg Empire in the 19th century. In 1997, he moved to Basel to take up a university assistantship there. His doctoral research focused on Polish and Ukrainian in Galicia under Austrian rule. Following the award of the Ph.D. in 1999 at the University of Basel, Jan Fellerer took up the post of University Lecturer in non-Russian Slavonic Languages at the University of Oxford and became Fellow of Wolfson College. At Oxford, he introduced Polish as a subsidiary degree subject in the Final Honour School of Modern Languages and teaches a range of subjects in Slavonic languages, linguistics and philology, including the structure and history of Ukrainian. His main research interests include the history of Polish, Czech and Ukrainian with special reference to the 19th century and aspects of Slavonic grammar, particularly the interface between syntax and the lexicon, and a new, exhaustive description of Polish morphology.
Moderation: Professor Dr. Alexander Wöll