THE ANTIQUITY OF UKRAINIAN, REFLECTED IN NEIGHBORING LANGUAGES.2
Authors:   Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Ukraine, Tyshchenko Kostyantyn 
Published: July 2023

The essay organizes a picture of homologous series of correspondences in the phenomena of Ukrainian and neighboring languages discovered over several centuries and collected in the author’s research in 2002–2021. Two groups of correspondences — inter-Slavic (1–6) and peri-Slavic (7–10) — became the cornerstones of the topic. These correspondences are found: (1) in the Upper Lusatian language (1st–2nd centuries) — discovered by H. Schuster-Ševc, the common compensatory lengthening of е, о > i in a closed syllable, which, according to the priority assessment of O. Stryzhák (1991), legalizes the concept of the Proto-Ukrainian language; in addition, there are common prothetic wand massive separate lexical and grammatical matches; (2) in Polabian — according to K. Polański, common systematic replacement of length with the result o > ü (still preserved in the Ukrainian dialects of Siverian Region: cf. Ukr. Siver. p[ü]dkladý, p[ǘ]ydem, v[ǘ] z’mem, k[ǘ]stka), and also ě («yat’») > i; prothetic w-, vocalization l̥ > åł > åŭ (as in Slovenian); (3) in the Oskol relic area of Polissia dialects of the Ukrainian language, also in manifestations of the rule of peripheral archaisms and the rule of G. Ascoli; (4) in Belarusian — along with massive lexical and grammatical matches (H. Pivtorák), the key evidence is, according to Yu. Shevelyóv, the contrast of the linguistic landscape on both sides of the Lida-Loiv isogloss strand; (5) in the Novgorod charters (XI-XII centuries) — according to H. Pivtorák as well as to the data provided by V. Yanin and A. Zaliznyak, in some of these charters the systematicity of proto-Ukrainian features indicates the separate influences of Kyiv speech; the lexicographer V. Dahl points to the same; (6) in Proto-Slavic (II century) — there are 18 (Proto-)Ukrainian innovations in the Proto-Slavic dictionary according to the list of M. Swadesh, from this group one innovation is shared with the group of 14 Russian innovations (khoróshyi); (7) in Gothic (III-IV centuries) — Gothic influence was widespread among the Slavs (V. Toporov, V. Martynov); it is followed by common-, East-Slavic and exclusively Ukrainian Gothicisms — both lexical (stráva, vára, tsiámryna, skýba, lýkhva, mýto, shéliah etc.) and grammatical — noun suffix -ar, verb prefix us-; the systematicity of Gothic influences in the toponymy of Ukraine is also proven (Piskáva r. IF, Tanyskáva r. Pl, Frumýliv stream IF, villages Trakhtemýriv Kv, Hovýliv Tr etc.); (8) in Celtic languages (II century) — noun suffix of the singulativ -yna, which arose in the Celtic world (L. Bednarczuk), lexical Celticisms (smeréka, bevz’, oboríh, cheliadýn), onomastics data (Kamúla mt., Rádorobel r.; Dazhdboh, Viy); counterparts in archaeological finds (Potýssia, Ólbia, Kániv, Chornóbyl, Súbotiv); (9) in the vernacular Latin language (II century) — an exclusive Ukrainian analogy with the grammar of Western Romance languages (I. Sharovólskyi) is the simple future imperfect tense (yístymu, znáty-mesh, bráty-mete... /manger-ò, sapr-ai, prender-ete/); contact (rather than book) lexical Latinisms are also here (tsybúlia, chynsh, tsiátka... /cepola, census, centus/); (10) in Scythian (-V / +II centuries) — according to 38 examples attested by Aristophanes, the Scythian pronunciation of Greek words had the same sound substitutions as the current Ukrainian («θ > t»: Téklia, Tanasiychúk; «χ > k»: Kryshtópivka; «φ > p»: Stepán, Panás, Pylýp, Suprún); according to V. Abaev, the Ukrainian phoneme г [ɦ] is a Scythian heritage; Iranian names of Kyiv residents are known from the annals (Прастѣнъ, Истръ, Съфандръ), Ukrainian has lexical Scythisms (potvóra, pochvára, sharováry), surnames (Perederíy, Peredríy), numerous toponyms; historical theonyms (Khors, Symárgl). The final picture can be seen from the features of Ukrainian itself — the all-Slavic character of its material; among its 82 defining features (40 phonetic and 42 lexicalgrammatical), 34 features are unique, and 48 are common to the languages of other Slavs, including: 31 with Upper Lusatian, 29 with Belarusian, 27 with Lower Lusatian, 19 with Polabian, 11 with Russian, from 23 to 20 with each of other 8 Slavic languages. The unique combination of these diagnostic facts from different epoques constitutes the specific essence of Ukrainian. Most of them are self-sufficient.