LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL SPECIFICITY OF EPISTOLARY ADDRESS (ON THE MATERIAL OF “LETTERS TO OLES GONCHAR” COMPILED BY M. STEPANENKO)
Authors: SHYTYK L. , KULINICH D. 
Published: December 2021

The article is devoted to the study of lexical and grammatical features of epistolary addresses (on the material of “Letters to Oles Honchar” compiled by M. Stepanenko). The address is interpreted as one of the manifestations of human communication needs which serves to establish and maintain speech contact, as well as to express the emotional and evaluative characteristics of the interlocutor. An epistolary address is a word or phrase by which the author of a letter nominates his addressee in the text of a written message to establish contact with him.

We processed 895 letters to Oles Honchar, in which 1185 addresses in Ukrainian and about 200 units in other languages had been recorded. Lexical features of addresses represent their belonging to the following semantic groups: addresses-anthroponyms (name, patronymic and surname); traditional etiquette forms (пан, товариш); general addresses (names of persons by generic or gender feature; names of persons by kinship in the indirect sense; names of persons by friendly relations); special addresses (names by profession, type of activity, position, academic titles); occasional addresses. Most often, senders address Oles Honchar by patronymic or by name, using it in full or in short form, and sometimes by surname.

The lexical and semantic content of addresses depends on the intention of the speaker, his politeness, knowledge of language etiquette and the peculiarities of the relationship with the writer. In order to strengthen the address, attributive distributors expressed by honoriﬁc and emotional-evaluative adjectives аre used. Honoriﬁc adjectives (шановний, високошановний, найшанованіший, глибокошановний, вельмишановний, високоповажний, etc.) convey a polite attitude and perform etiquette function. Emotional-evaluative adjectives (дорогий, славний, щирий, незабутній, рідний, любий, коханий, etc.) denote sincerity, friendliness, friendly aﬀection and perform an evaluative function. We reveal a signiﬁcant proportion of constructions in which adjectives of both groups are used. This causes a change in the tonality of the communicative situation and reduces interpersonal distance. Possessive pronouns мій, наш, which have partially lost the meaning of possessiveness, strengthen the intimacy, cordiality and sincerity of the relationship. Addresses in Russian, Belarusian, Polish and English are described.

It is found that the grammatical diﬀerentiation of addresses directly depends on lexical and grammatical features (proper or common names and substantivized parts of speech) and morphological means of their expression. It is conﬁrmed that the typical morphological form of addresses is the vocative case of the noun, as well as the homonymous nominative case in letters written during the Soviet period. Violations of morphological norms (diﬀerent case forms of lexical phrase components, a non-normative form Олесе) and orthographic mistakes in spelling of the writer’s patronymic are revealed. The non-normative form of the nominative case as a means of expressing the address in letters dated 1990–1995 is substantiated.

The results of the research show that the most frequent lexeme is Олесю Терентійовичу. Forms Олесь Терентійович and Олесю are less used. Quantitative indicators of addressing forms are summarized in the table.

We see the prospect of further scientiﬁc research in deepening other vectors of analysis of addresses, in particular in the study of their functional and stylistic potential.