Means of overcoming the consequences of government interference with the grammatical system of the Ukrainian language
Authors: Ginzburg Mykhailo 
Published: December 2024

Background. From 1933 to 1991, the totalitarian government had been actively interfering with the structure of the Ukrainian language, banning not only specific words but also syntactic constructions, grammatical forms, and word-formation models and implementing instead other ones influenced by Russian or even borrowed from the Russian language. This interference was documented as repressive prescriptions of the People`s Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR. Due to the long-standing dominance of these prescriptions, the syntactic constructions, grammatical forms, and word-formation models forcibly removed from the authentic Ukrainian language and branded as “nationalistic” became somewhat forgotten or completely forgotten. At the same time, those imposed by Soviet textbooks and grammar books became habitual and natural.Contribution to the research field. The present study is dedicated to the necessity of getting rid of forcibly introduced syntactic constructions and grammatical forms in modern literary Ukrainian. For this purpose, based on the analysed sources, the seven most important prescriptive norms are systematically formulated. The latest linguistic theories (aspectology and typology of passive and resultative constructions) are involved in proving the fundamental impossibility of Ukrainian constructions with the instrumental case of an actor.Purpose:1) to clearly outline the main imposed syntactic constructions and grammatical forms that, as a result of many-year government interference with the structure of the Ukrainian language, have become deeply embedded in the official speech and the professional and educational literature;2) to formulate prescriptive norms that must be implemented as precise prescriptions in academic grammar books and school and university textbooks, as well as to be approved as a grammar standard of the Ukrainian language.Methods. The first research method is a comparative analysis of the sources in terms of their presentation of the syntactic and morphological norms of the Ukrainian language, which were the main object of government interference. The second method is to generalize the results of the comparative analysis. Taking into account how the compared sources present these norms, the following seven groups of sources have been selected: 1) the language-related sources that are not garbled by government interference; 2) the repressive prescriptions and editions and projects on Ukrainian orthography before 1941; 3) the «canonical» Soviet grammar-related publications and editions on Ukrainian orthography after 1945; 4) the innovative Soviet grammar-related publications issued after 1945; 5) the grammar-related academic publications, textbooks and editions on Ukrainian orthography of the Independence period; 6) the studies on the revival of specific norms of the Ukrainian language; 7) the manuals on the culture of the Ukrainian language.Results. The author identifies two of the primary deficiencies in the contemporary Ukrainian language syntax caused by these repressive prescriptions: the use of verbs ending in ‑sia in the passive meaning and the use of the actor in the instrumental case. The author describes attempts to bring the system of Ukrainian diieprykmetnyks as close as possible to the Russian system by way of implementing the types of diieprykmetnyks ending in ‑chyi, ‑shchyi, ‑shyi, and ‑myi into the Ukrainian orthography of 1933 and the projects on orthography of 1938 and 1940; as a result, up today a comprehensive elimination of the diieprykmetnyks ending in ‑chyi has not been achieved so far.Discussion. The article proposes to re-implement the forcibly removed prescriptive norms into contemporary academic grammar books and school and university textbooks and to approve them as a grammar standard for the modern Ukrainian language. This will help overcome the main consequences of many-year government interference.