Variant Paradigm of Ukrainian Nouns in the Context of Codification, Modern Media and Scientific Speech

Abstract

The article analyzes the paradigmatic types of nouns in the context of the reform of Ukrainian spelling, highlights the codified variants of the four declensions of nouns, characterizes the trends of their functional manifestation in modern media and scientific communication, in particular, distinguishes the dominant forms that are less used and not used in journalistic publications (“Gazeta po-Ukrainsky”, “Day”, “Competitor”) and the specialized scientific and theoretical magazine “Ukrainian Language”. The study of morphological variants of the first declension made it possible to include the majority of lexemes with a zero ending among the more frequent ones, and morphological synonyms, usually with the inflection of -ів (-iv), among the less used ones. The investigated corpus of factual material proved the uneven functioning of the variant forms of the second declension recommended in “Ukrainian Spelling” in media and linguistic speech. In journalistic and scientific texts, there is an established tendency to predominate in the dative and locative cases of nominations of beings with the endings -ові, -еві (-ovi, -evi) and names of non- beings with the inflection -y. So far, the names of people proposed in the new edition of “Ukrainian Spelling” have not been recorded with endings in the local case, for example (при) Олесі, Євгені, Івані. Speech practice has shown that journalistic and scientific sources show different frequency of use of variants regulated in the “Ukrainian Spelling” with inflections -і and -и, characteristic of nouns of the third declension on -ть, as well as several other substantives in the genitive singular. In media publications, long-established forms with the ending -i prevail, variants with inflection -и are usually single, but they are actively used in professional linguistic publications. It was found that the grammatical synonymy of nouns of the fourth declension is implemented by forms with the ending -я and the possible suffix -ен-. In the corpus of research material, nouns with this service formant dominate. Instead, their correlates without this suffix are either rarely used or absent altogether. The method of describing parallel forms of nouns in the context of codification and modern language practice proposed in the article is promising for the study of case variants of other variable parts of speech.