Regional Varieties of Standard Ukrainian

D,ie Welt der Slaven LX, 2015, 223-247.

HOW MANY VARIETIES OF STANDARD UKRAINIAN DOES ONE NEED?

Revising the Social Typology of Standard Ukrainian

1. Introduction The formation of new (vernacular) standard Ukrainian has been in the fo-cus of numerous publications after Ukraine gained its independence in 1991. Since then the language situation in Ukraine has experienced a dras-tic change in the functional status of dialects vis-à-vis the standard lan-guage. Called by Gricenko (2012, 41) ‘the dialect Reconquista’, the current situation is characterized by a heavy influence of dialects upon the norms of standard Ukrainian accompanied by a slackening of the puristic tendency to ban dialect elements, including those channeled through dia-sporic Ukrainian (Taranenko 2013). However, some of the attempts at re-vising the level of the codification of standard Ukrainian in relation to its dialectal differentiation and literary tradition(s) (cf., e.g., Tkač 2000, 2007a, 2007b), appear poorly grounded (cf. Danylenko 2009c).

In this study I will show that, despite a positive trend of the ‘dialect Reconquista,’ extreme regionalization is likely to unbalance the stylistic stratification of standard Ukrainian. Leaning on the conceptual framework for the study of Slavic standard languages as discussed most recently by Mečkovskaja (2004; cf. Danylenko 2008c), this article offers a critical sur-vey of the major classifications of standard Ukrainian (sections 2-2.2). As a theoretical frame of reference, I will employ the triangulation approach based on the societal-political (sections 3-3.1), spatial (dialectal) and chrono-logical (temporal) parameters (section 3.2.). As a result, I will substantiate a revised multilayered social typology of standard Ukrainian accounting for a hierarchy of regional varieties and sub-varieties as well as national varieties of this language (section 4). The socio-typological profiling of standard Ukrainian will be conducted by projecting its dialectal landscape onto the age of its literary tradition(s) depending on the social prestige of the corresponding cultural centers. Consequently, regional varieties (and sub-varieties) of standard Ukrainian will be newly mapped out from the three standpoints: (1) its dialectal differentiation (2) chronological changes as reflected in the literary tradition and its dialectal base, and (3) the existence of regional and/or national cultural centers. Finally, in section 4, the hierarchical relations between regional varieties and sub-varieties of

224 Andrii Danylenko

standard Ukrainian will be analyzed in tandem with some national varieties that might have come into being in the 20th c.

2. Choosing differentiating features Unlike 15 differentiating features in Brozovič (1967) and 23 features in Tolstoj (1988), Mečkovskaja (2004, 260) limited recently her social typolo-gy to the following six differentiating properties: (1) homogeneity vs. divergence, i.e., the degree of ‘areal consolidation’ of a

particular language, (2) the age of its literary tradition, (3) the level of influences on a particular language during the whole history of its

formation and contacts, including supranational languages like Church Sla-vonic or Latin,

(4) the use of a particular language outside its ethnic territories (mono- vs. pluriethnicity)1,

(5) the communicative rank of a language, that is, its multiform tasks and official status,

(6) the degree of liberalism and pluralism in resolving the national language question.

Looking rather compact, the first two features are chosen for our analysis not incidentally. Having much in common with the synchronic (Group A) and diachronic (Group B) features in Tolstoj’s (1988, 16-18) classification, they can be treated as primary from the standpoint of their independence from the ‘human factor’, although they might not play the first role in the formation of a particular standard language (Mečkovskaja 2004, 261). What is important for our discussion is that both Mečkovskaja’s and Tol-stoj’s qualitative classifications call for a continuum representation for each of the features (Garvin 1993, 41-44). It is noteworthy that the same con-tinuum representation of differentiating features is presupposed by the newest, ‘tetrahedral model’ in Wingender (2013). However, we opt for the

* I would like to thank the participants in the panel “The East Slavic Standard Lan-guages: Bridging History with Typology” at the 46th Annual Convention of the ASEE ES, November 20–23, 2014, San Antonio/TX, for their insightful comments and queries. I am also grateful to Peter Rehder for his editorial guidance. Needless to say, all the shortcomings in the proposed discussion of standard Ukrainian and its regional varieties are mine.

1 The notion of pluriethnicity can be juxtaposed with that of ‘pluricentricity’ in Clyne (1989; cf. Voss and Jusufi 2013). The latter term indicates that a language has more than one center, i.e., several centers, each providing a national variety with its own norms. Examples of pluricentric languages are English, French, German, and some other languages. As the material discussed in this paper suggests, the phenomenon of pluricentricity can be tentatively viewed both ‘centripetally’ and ‘centrifugally’. I will show that Ukrainian seems to combine both types of pluricentricity (see section 4).

How Many Varieties of Standard Ukrainian Does One Need? 225

afore-mentioned features offered by Tolstoj and Mečkovskaja as those that relate heuristically better to the vernacular-based nature of new standard Ukrainian (see section 3).

2.1. The five varieties of standard Ukrainian The above-cited dialectal and diachronic continuum-like features have been grosso modo applied in some of the commonly adopted social typolo-gies of standard Ukrainian which allows for a certain continuity of a re-vised typology as synopsized in section 4. One of them was offered by Gricenko (1993) who argued that new literary (written) Ukrainian, at the initial stage of its formation, demonstrated the existence of five literary varieties called by him ‘literary languages’2. Such a plurality of standards was provoked by a political dismemberment of the country that had gone through several partitions among neighboring polities, at least, from the late 14th c. on3. According to Gricenko, the sociolinguistic situation in the Ukrainian ethnic lands in the late 18th – early 19th cc. brought about the formation of the following standard languages: 1 . The Central Dnieper s tandard language. Conventionally associated with

the publication of Ivan Kotljarevs’kyj’s “Enejida” by Maksym Parpura in 1798 in St. Petersburg, this language was largely modeled on the “Sloboda” and Central Dnieper dialects. This language was primarily used in fiction, while Russian in all other secular spheres. In the mid–20th c., the Central Dnieper standard language became prevalent over all other local standards, thus repre-senting ‘the Ukrainian nation as a unity’ (Gricenko 1993, 287).

2 . The Gal ic ian s tandard language. Premised on the Dniester dialect, this lan-guage became vernacular-oriented after the publication of the “Rusalka Dně-

2 In accordance with the eastern Slavic philological tradition, Gricenko uses the term

‘literary language’ (cf. Schenker and Stankiewicz 1980; Wingender 1998, 128). For the sake of uniformity throughout our discussion, I employ the term ‘standard language’ re-ferring to either a fully codified literary standard or a standard language in the shaping.

3 One can speak about four partitions of Ukraine which affected the development of literary standards as used in its lands. The first partition took place in 1387 when Ukraine was partitioned among Lithuania (which absorbed the greater part of the country), Poland (Galicia, Xolm, now Chełm), Moldova (Bukovyna) and Hungary (Transcarpathia). The national revolution of 1648 brought about the rise of an autonomous Cossack state east of the Dnieper as a Russian protectorate in 1654 and relegated the part of the country west of the Dnieper to Poland under the second partition in 1677. In 1793–1795, Ukraine was partitioned for the third time between Russia and Austria-Hungary which turned Kyiv, Poltava, and, in particular, Xarkiv, after the founding of its university, into the principle cultural centers. Finally, the fourth partition of Ukraine among Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania took place in 1919 (Shevelov 1980). As a result of these partitions, standard Ukrainian as emerged in the 20th c. does not appear monodialectal in its foundation, while its geographical and cultural centers shifted over the course of several centuries (Danylenko 2008b, 2009b, 2011).


strovaja” (1837). Influenced by Russian, Church Slavonic, and Polish, the Ga-lician language contributed to the development of new styles, includeing those used in science and mass media. Terminologies based on the local vernacular and dialects were introduced into the Central Dnieper standard, thus ushering in a period of interrelation between the Galician and the Central Dnieper standards in the late 19th and early 20th cc. (cf. Shevelov 1966, 25-33; Mat-vijas 1996).

3 . The Bukovynian s tandard language. The beginnings of this language are commonly connected with the publication of literary works of Jurij Fed’kovyč (1834-1888) who was first to employ in 1861, awkwardly though, the elements of the Hucul dialect in his language (Greščuk and Greščuk 2010; Greščuk 2012/2013). This standard language was used primarily in fiction while Ger-man and Romanian were employed in all other ‘secular’ spheres. Subsequently, the Bukovynian standard followed the functional model of the Galician stan-dard language and, later, the Central Dnieper standard language (cf. Tkač 2007b).

4 . The Transcarpathian s tandard language4. The first attempt at creating this language, based on the Transcarpathian and southern Lemkian dialects, dates back to the 1850s. Largely oriented toward the Galician standard, this language was influenced by Russian, Latin, Church Slavonic, the so-called jazyčie as well as Hungarian, Romanian, and Czech which were declared, at different periods, official languages in the corresponding territories. The introduction of the Central Dnieper standard language in Transcarpathia in the 1920s-1930s proved to be controversial. After 1945, the local variety was forcefully substi-tuted for by the Central Dnieper standard language.

5 . The Vojvodinian or Bačka-Srem standard language. Having been in use in Serbia and Croatia (eastern Slavonia) for more than a century, this language acquired a high level of its codification. Based largely on the southern Lem-kian resettled dialects, this language did not have its own literary tradition. Since the mid–20th c., Vojvodinian Rusyn5 has been functioning as a codified language (Duličenko 1981, 11-28).

4 Throughout this article, the term ‘Transcarpathian’ is used primarily in the ethno-

linguistic sense. It refers to the dialects belonging to the Ukrainian linguistic and cultural space irrespective of their positioning within certain political entities (Danylenko 2008a, 123–124, fn. 1; 2009a, 53–56). Today, premised on geographical and, strictly speaking, linguistic (dialectal) criteria, one commonly distinguish among Transcarpathian (Central Transcarpathian), West Carpathian (Lemkian), and North Subcarpathian (Bojkian) dialects; all these dialects belong to the archaic Carpathian dialectal group of West Ukrainian (Nimčuk 2000; cf. Shevelov 1979, 36–37; Dulichenko 2006).

5 Here and throughout the text, the term (Vojvodinian) Rusyn is used in accordance with the Ukrainian-language practice. The speakers of this language are commonly called Rusinians or, to use an old Latin-based term, Ruthenians in English. Attested in the writings of the Annalista Saxo (ca. 1139) and Gallus Anonymus (12th c.), the latter learned term (cf. German Ruthenisch) was commonly used in reference to local Ukrai-nians in Austria-Hungary (Danylenko 2006, 101). The former name was derived from Rusini (Rusnaci), a self-designation used not only by the Vojvodinian Rusyns (cf. Birn-


According to Gricenko (1993, 289), all the aforementioned standard lan-guages were based on rural dialects and literary traditions as cultivated in different parts of Ukraine, with an exception of the insular Vojvodinian standard which came into being in the early 20th c. Reciprocal influences of the Central Dnieper standard and the Galician language were most pro-nounced in the late 19th – early 20th cc. First emerging as separate lan-guages, they went through a period of mutual enrichment (synthesis) that ultimately, in the 1930s, lead to the functional dominance of the Central Dnieper standard language.

Despite this apparently well-balanced qualitative typology, some of Gricenko’s arguments warrant revision. For instance, the author (Gricen-ko 1993, 290-291) maintains that today within the Ukrainian ethnic ter-ritories one uses ‘one single standard language’ which remains locally varie-gated (cf. AUM)6. At the same time, however, Gricenko (1993, 290) claims that there are, at least, four standard languages employed by the Ukrainian speakers: (1) standard Ukrainian, (2) Galician Ukrainian, (3) Vojvodinian Rusyn, and (4) Transcarpathian Rusyn. They differ only by their localization, level of their codification, and distance from their dia-lectal bases. Premised on the continuum of western Ukrainian dialects, Gricenko stopped short of delving into a discussion of other varieties of Rusyn. Thus, according to the ‘Carpatho-Rusyn view’ (Aleksandr Bonkalo, Antonoij Hodinka, Juraj Vaňko, Anna Pliškova, and others), one should distinguish, at least, two more standard Rusyn languages which are Lemko (Lemkian) Rusyn in Poland and Prešov Rusyn in Slovakia (Kushko 2007, 111). Unlike Gricenko, the advocates of the existence of four Rusyn stan-dard languages make use of a non-linguistic thesis, according to which baum 1981/1983, 39; Lunt 1998) but also by the Czech authorities in reference to the local (Transcarpathian) Ukrainians (Nimčuk 2013, 4). It should be noted, however, that the Slavic form rusyns’kyj as employed by the advocates of standard Rusyn, in particular in Transcarpathia, is not a local form, but a mere calque from the Czech rusinský (jazyk), cf. rusin = Maloros (Trávníček 1952, 1352), cf. also rusnac’kyj ‘rutén, ruszin’ (Csopei 1883, 353; Nimčuk 2013, 4–9).

6 Shevelov (1966, also 1989, 65) consistently defended the idea of a multidialectal foundation of standard Ukrainian. Yet one can agree with this thesis with some reserve-tions. After the linguistic debates of 1891–1893 and especially 1907–1909, 1912–1913, both the Galician and Ukrainian normalizers concurred that standard Ukrainian had to be based on Southeast Ukrainian with necessary regional admixtures. This synthesis was primaryly possible at the level of the vocabulary and, to a lesser extent, in the grammar – selection of lexical items became, in fact, the bone of contention in the early 20th–cen-tury linguistic discussions (Čaplenko 1970, 197). More importantly, lexical innovations into the vernacular standard as cultivated in Russian Ukraine were channeled not from the Dniester dialect directly but via the Galician-Bukovynian koiné with extended and well-developed terminological systems and style registers which were lacking in Central Ukrainian (Danylenko 2016).


these standards are ‘based on dialects in the countries where Rusyns live’ (Vaňko 2007, 76)7, a stance which was aptly identified by Marvan (1988, 43) as a product of ‘belated Romanticism’.

Overall, granted for the functional overlap among the varieties accept-ed by Gricenko for the sociolectal continuum of Ukrainian, it is difficult to conceive the status of standard Ukrainian in relation to its regional vari-eties. It is not either clear whether standard Ukrainian should be treated as a full-fledged regional variety on par with other regional standards (va-rieties) demonstrating arguably lower levels of their codification. In the latter case, the notion of the national Ukrainian language is reduced to the existence of three almost equally positioned standards of Central Dnieper Ukrainian, Galician Ukrainian, and Transcarpathian Ukrainian. A second possibility, arising from Gricenko’s argumentation, is of Ukrainian being a pluricentric language whose norms and dialectal base ‘tolerate’ the emer-gence and existence of not only regional varieties, but also of such a na-tional variety as Vojvodinian Rusyn. In this case the speakers of Vojvodi-nian Rusyn should be identified with a particular nation – by both mem-bers of that nation and outsiders (cf. Clyne 1989, 359).

2.2. Further regionalization of standard Ukrainian A more detailed typology of standard Ukrainian, based primarily on the spatial (dialectal) parameter, is found in Matvijas (1998). According to him, standard Ukrainian consists of three – East Ukrainian, West Ukrainian, and Rusyn – varieties whose hierarchical positioning depends on the age and level of codification linked to a particular literary tradition. Addition-ally, Matvijas proposed to distinguish ‘regional sub-varieties’ (rehional’ni vidminnosti) for the first two of the aforesaid varieties as seen in the fol-lowing classification: I. The East Ukrainian variety of standard Ukrainian:

(a) The Eastern Polissian sub-variety, (b) The Central Dnieper-Poltava sub-variety, (c) The Sloboda sub-variety, (d) The Steppe sub-variety, (e) The Podolja sub-variety (f) The Volynja and Western Polissian sub-variety

II. The West Ukrainian variety of standard Ukrainian: (a) The Dniester sub-variety,

7 In addition to a dozen of Rusyn villages in the Maramureș region of north-central

Romania along the present-day border with Ukraine, Rusyn is used in two villages in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county in the northeastern part of Hungary (cf. Vaňko 2007, 76). Quite anecdotally, for Hungarian Rusyn, Benedek (2004) introduced a writing system standard, based on the Komloška (Komlóska) dialect rather than that spoken in the village Mucon (Múcsony).


(b) The Hucul-Bukovyna-Pokuttja sub-variety, (c) The Bojkian-Carpathian sub-variety

III. The [Vojvodian] Rusyn variety of standard Ukrainian Despite its detailed classification, Matvijas’s system of regional varieties and sub-varieties of standard Ukrainian raises at least two questions.

First, in the present frame of reference it is not clear why a richer rami-fication is posited for the East Ukrainian variety which is known to be less dialectally differentiated in comparison with Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia (Gricenko 1993, 291; Mečkovskaja 2004, 265; AUM 2, 3). Tentatively, one can explain this discrepancy by the fact that Matvijas con-ceived his classification primarily in the developmental context of the cor-responding literary traditions, thus leaving aside the spatial (dialectal) fac-tor as such. At the same time, the richness of the dialectal differentiation in West Ukraine does not represent the distribution of sub-varieties of the West Ukrainian variety of standard Ukrainian in the classification of Mat-vijas. One should also remember that, for some sub-varieties like the Hu-cul-Bukovyna-Pokuttja one, the development and influence of the local literary tradition were limited.

Second, the hierarchical relationships between the varieties, on the one hand, and their sub-varieties, on the other, appear blurred, especially for West Ukraine. To begin with, it is not obvious whether standard Ukrai-nian should be associated with its East Ukrainian variety and, by exten-sion, the Central Dnieper-Poltava sub-variety. One wonders also whether the Vojvodinian Rusyn variety of standard Ukrainian can be placed at the same hierarchical level of subordination as its western and eastern vari-eties in the classification offered by Matvijas (cf. Gricenko 1993, 288-289).

On the whole, the social typologies construed by Gricenko and Mat-vijas do not look persuasive primarily from the standpoint of the hierarch-ical relationship between the regional varieties and sub-varieties of stan-dard Ukrainian. In this respect, the most shining example is Vojvodinian Rusyn. In view of its genetic closeness to Ukrainian, it is not clear how one should treat this insular variety inasmuch it has been developing in isolation from the mainstream standardization processes taking place in the Ukrainian ethnic lands.

3. Triangulation in the social typology of standard Ukrainian As has been mentioned in section 1, the frame of revision to be presented here will be premised on several key notional components such as the dia-lectal base of standard Ukrainian (dialectal parameter), the age of its liter-ary tradition(s) (chronological parameter), and what was labeled by Rehder (1995, 363) the ‘state-political’ factor and what I will call, instead, the ‘societal-political’ parameter (cf. Tolstoj 1988, 16-17). The introduction


of such a triangulation model8 is likely to enhance the social-typological profiling of standard Ukrainian viewed both centripetally and centrifugally (see fn. 1). This model will allow us to distinguish at least two types of hierarchical relationships, one within the regional varieties and sub-vari-eties of standard Ukrainian (centripetal pluricentricity), and the second outside this standard (centrifugal pluricentricity). In this respect, the ‘tetra-hedral model’ proposed recently by Wingender (2013) does not seem to serve the case of standard Ukrainian. Premised, in particular, on the dia-lectal parameter to the extent it reflects the vernacular-based system of new standard Ukrainian, the conceptual framework of ‘triangulation’ fits better with the analysis that follows.

In section 3.1, I will first dwell on the ‘societal-political’ parameter, thus providing a socio-historical and cultural canopy of the sociolinguistic conditions under which the formation of new standard Ukrainian became possible. Section 3.2 deals with the chronological and dialectal parameters of standard Ukrainian.

3.1. The societal-political parameter Conventionally associated with the publication of Ivan Kotljarevs’kyj’s “Enejida” in 1798, the formation of new (vernacular) standard Ukrainian in the 19th c. was influenced by a number of societal-political factors. Be-ginning with the third partition of Ukraine between the Austrian and Russian empires in 1793-1795, the development of new standard Ukrai-nian was progressing in several different cultural and sociolinguistic situa-tions as observed in Dnieper Ukraine, on the one hand, and Galicia, Bu-kovyna, and Transcarpathia, on the other.

In the Russian Empire the Ukrainian language was consistently banned from the public use through a series of prohibitive decrees in 1863, 1876, and 1881 (Danylenko 2010, 2016). Until 1916, the Ukrainian language question was characterized by the complete lack of Ukrainian schooling, church or press; sporadic publications of Ukrainian belles-lettres and poet-ry, almost no translations from foreign languages, the exclusion of Ukrai-nian from public life and its only exceptional use in intelligentsia families because of low prestige of the Ukrainian language even among illiterate peasants who spoke among themselves their original dialects. Ukrainian was assigned rural-familial-folkloric-poetic functions, but not others (She-

8 The term ‘triangulation’ is borrowed from the empirical social sciences, where ana-

logical procedures have been experiencing wide application already for some decades. Going as far back as to the systemic linguistics of Mel’nikov (2003), triangulation models have become popular in language studies, in particular in dialectology (Wiemer, Seržant, and Erker 2014).


velov 1989, 11, 26). Hence the appearance of a Ukrainian-based linguistic hybrid (suržyk) permeated with ‘unmotivated’ Russian elements which, since the late 19th c., has been routinely castigated in both public and scholarly discourse (Taranenko 2014; Danylenko 2015).

The nascent progress in the development of the Ukrainian language after 1905 abolishment of any preliminary censorship, was halted by the outbreak of World War I on 18 July 1914. The state of Ukrainian became ever more precarious after the occupation of Galicia and Bukovyna by the Russian troops. A systematic Russification of these territories began with-out delay – all the Ukrainian periodicals (15 in total) and institutions were closed and the leading public figures were deported. In Russian Ukraine, as early as 9 January 1915 all the Ukrainian-language periodicals were closed down by the authorities in the Kyjiv military district (Čaplenko 1970, 260). As in 1863 and 1876, that was the beginning of a new inter-mission in the development of the Ukrainian language until the February 1917 revolution ushered in the revival of an active political life and the public use of the Ukrainian language on an unprecedented scale (Dany-levs’ka 2009).

In the Austrian and, after the constitutional compromise of 1867, the Austro-Hungarian empire until its collapse in 1918, the use of Ukrainian was regulated by the liberal constitution of 21 December 1867, although with differences in Austrian and Hungarian Ukraine. In Hungarian Ukrai-ne (Transcarpathia) the language was exposed to aggressive Magyarization and excluded from the public use. In fact, the smallest and the most back-ward Ukrainian land, Transcarpathia, made no contribution to the forma-tion of new standard Ukrainian – Ukrainians there were little acquainted with it (Shevelov 1989, 25). Facing therefore difficulties in creating their own standard language in place of Slaveno-Rusyn (a local recension of Church Slavonic with a vernacular admixture) (Danylenko 2009c), less appropriate for secular, modern literature, the local leaders chose Russian as their standard language. During the second part of the 19th c. that was a deliberate defensive maneuver directed against the encroachments from the dominant Magyar culture. However, being proficient in German and Hungarian, the local normalizers did not have a working knowledge of Russian, hence the use of a macaronic jargon (jazyčije) going back to the late 18th c. (Rusinko 2003, 213, 222-223; Danylenko 2008b, 109-111)9.

9 The emergence of jazyčije was not a haphazard phenomenon but a result of a long literary practice initiated at the chancery of Bishop Andrij Bačyns’kyj (1732-1809) (Udvari 2000, 216). Thus, the language of his circulars demonstrated an archaizing tendency to use primarily Church Slavonic of the Meletian (Ukrainian) recension, albeit with a Russian tinge, at the cost of diminishing share of the local vernacular (Danylenko 2009a, 60). It comes therefore as no surprise that Tolstoj (1990, 266) identified the Carpatho-


In Galicia, the Ukrainian language was admitted into public use. Yet, despite the appearance of abstract vocabulary and specialized terminology in local periodicals and scientific publications, the Ukrainian society in Galicia was still not modern and harmoniously developed (Fellerer 2005, 248-274). Virtually, all intellectuals were bilingual (Ukrainian and Polish) or even trilingual (Ukrainian, Polish, and German) as was the case with the most prominent western Ukrainian writer, political activist and literary critic Ivan Franko (1856-1916).

In Bukovyna, Ukrainian held an intermediate position: legally Ukrai-nian was not persecuted in the Austrian lands, but practically the rights granted were limited (Shevelov 1989, 15-16). However, as in Galicia, ef-forts to improve the language situation on the cultural, economic, and po-litical levels in Bukovyna proved less successful, while the local intellect-tuals were quite weak in elevating the social prestige of Ukrainian, in par-ticular in education (Tkač 2007b, 14-19). As in Galicia, and especially in Transcarpathia, the local educational system both reflected and perpetu-ated the lopsided structure of the Ukrainian society and its language. For instance, the local Moscophiles were strongly opposed to any kind of phonetic spelling (Tkač 2007b, 32-39). Not surprisingly, the first phonetic orthographic system (kulišivka) supported by the local populists was intro-duced in Galicia by Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819-1897), an East Ukrainian who was trying to bridge linguistic norms as used in the Austro-Hungari-an and Russian Empires (Danylenko 2012).

Despite apparent differences in the language policies implemented in Russia and Austria-Hungary, the process of the formation of standard Ukrainian was largely similar, especially in Dnieper Ukraine and Hungari-an-ruled Transcarpathia (Danylenko 2008b, 2009a). The most telling dia-gnostic sociolinguistic feature was the emergence of unbalanced bilingual-lism as a result of the complete lack or underdevelopment of Ukrainian schooling, church or press in the two parts of Ukraine as well as the ap-pearance of linguistic hybrids like suržyk and jazyčie. Such hybrids arose as a reaction to German, Magyar, and Polish assimilationist pressures in the Austrian- and Hungarian-ruled Ukraine (jazyčie), on the one hand, and Russian domination in Dnieper Ukraine (suržyk), on the other.

3.2. The spatial and chronological parameters The populist theory of the formation of new standard Ukrainian after the demise of its previous literary tradition (Fedot Žylko, Lukija Humec’ka, Olexa Horbatsch, Svitlana Jermolenko, Larysa Masenko) maintains that Rusyn standard with jazyčije based on eastern Slavic (southwestern Ukrainian) dialects with an admixture of Russian elements.


during the first partition of Ukraine between the Russian Empire and Po-land the development of literary styles in Ukrainian was abruptly halted. Allegedly, all literary varieties of Middle Ukrainian ceased to function in Dnieper Ukraine, where Russian was introduced in all social and cultural domains. Masenko (1995) believes that it is to Kotljarevs’kyj’s credit that, by publishing his “Enejida” in 1798, he discovered the only acceptable way to formulate a standard Ukrainian in his day, by choosing Southeast Ukrai-nian as the homogenous dialectal base of belles-lettres.

A more dispassionate and comprehensive treatment of new standard Ukrainian must be placed in the context of the formation of literary genres and styles in the 18th c. in Church Slavonic of the Ukrainian (Me-letian) recension and the prostaja mova (Ruthenian) (Danylenko 2008c). As a result, the appearance of new standard Ukrainian in the early 19th c. presents only a certain stage in the history of written Ukrainian as a whole and the new Ukrainian language in particular. What was so peculiar about the new standard was the ratio of vernacular elements that tended to out-balance the native bookish and the Slavonic forms. So, the novelty lay not so much in the use of new vernacular elements in the literary mainstream, since the ‘new’ prostaja mova was genetically derived from the prostaja mo-va of the 17th c. as used in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later in the autonomous Cossack state (Hetmanate) but in the redistribu-tion (codification) of these elements, caused by changes primarily in poetic and fictional genres, but not in the burlesque genre (Shevelov 1980, 153).

All in all, there are no solid grounds for positing any chronological gap or ‘break’ between Kotliarevs’kyj’s predecessors and the publication of the “Enejida” in 1798. His language, based predominantly on Southeast Ukrai-nian, hardly heralded a switch from a ‘bookish’ and purportedly ‘dead’ lan-guage to another, vernacular standard. One deals in this case with a change in the dialectal foundations of a vernacular standard that coexisted with the secular literary tradition of the prostaja mova used in tandem with Church Slavonic in all the Ukrainian lands, including Transcarpathia. Un-like the prostaja mova in the Polish Crown, with a plethora of Polonisms, the prostaja mova cultivated in Transcarpathia in the 17th c. revealed pri-marily Hungarian and western Slavic borrowings which did not, however, interfere with its Ukrainian systemic features (Danylenko 2008a, 2009a).

The switch from the North Ukrainian base of the older literary tradi-tion to Southeast Ukrainian was provoked, as has been mentioned, by the role of new cultural centers in Dnieper Ukraine and the relative homo-geneity of the new, southeastern dialectal base (Danylenko 2008c, 70-71). However, as late as the 1860s, the normalizers of this language were not yet sure whether their program, oriented toward the Central Dnieper dia-lect, would ultimately prevail rather than the standard cultivated in Aus-


trian and Hungarian Ukraine. Ultimately, the Central Dnieper dialect pre-vailed. From the linguistic point of view, this process was facilitated by the dialectal homogeneity of its new, southeastern foundation. From the sociolinguistic viewpoint, new standard Ukrainian emerged as a reaction to the ever-strengthening influence of Russian premised largely on the Church Slavonic tradition.

At the same time, in Galicia, Bukovyna, and especially Transcarpathia, the Ukrainian clergy, facing Polish, German, and Hungarian acculturation, found themselves the only defenders of a separate Ukrainian regional identity. Instead of a vernacular standard, they opted for a new standard language largely based on the Church Slavonic tradition which, unlike Russian-ruled Ukraine, was not ‘appropriated’ by the Polish or Hungarian assimilationists (Danylenko 2008b, 109-111).

Despite certain achievements, the aforesaid solution in West Ukraine proved anachronistic, especially in view of the synthesis of national styles into one vernacular standard by the Xarkiv romanticists in the 1830s-1840s and by Pantelejmon Kuliš together with Taras Ševčenko (1814-1861) in the second part of the 19th c. After the introduction of the punitive re-gulations of 1863, 1876, and 1881, aimed at the elimination of the Ukrai-nian language from public use in the Russian empire, West Ukraine join-ed the all-Ukrainian vernacularizing trend, expanding eventually into lit-erary criticism, the humanities, and science which were closed off to Ukra-inians in Russia.

The Galician input was the strongest as compared with the contribu-tion made by the literati of Bukovyna, let alone Transcarpathia which was lagging drastically behind in the adoption of the vernacularizing tendency in the formation of new standard Ukrainian (Matvijas 1998, 93-123). As a rare exception, one should recall an innovative language program of the Transcarpathian priest-scholar Myxajlo Lučkaj (1789-1843) and his im-mediate followers. Unlike Ivan Kotljarevs’kyj and the Xarkiv Romanticists who developed a new standard Ukrainian language in opposition to Rus-sian Church Slavonic, Lučkaj made in his “Grammatica Slavo-Ruthena” (1830) an attempt to secularize Church Slavonic (Slaveno-Rusyn) (Dany-lenko 2010). His language program was shared by Ivan Fogarašij (Fogo-rosše, Fogarassy), whose 1833 grammar “Rus’ko uhors’ka ili madȩrska hram-matika. Orosz Magyar Grammatika. Rutheno Ungarica Grammatika” was premised on the same theoretical tenets as Lučkaj’s Grammar. With some reservations, Lučkaj’s program can be compared with that of Archiman-drite Hryhorij and amanuensis Myxajlo Vasylijevyč who tried to combine in the text of the Peresopnycja Gospel (1556-1561) Church Slavonic with the prostaja mova rather than with vernacular Ukrainian (Danylenko 2009c, 59-60).


The invasion of West Ukrainian elements (Galicianisms) brought about the linguistic debates in 1891-1893, 1907-1909, and 1912-1913 between the inveterate opponents of the Galician innovations in contemporary pub-lications appearing in Russian Ukraine and the supporters of the Galician-Bukovynian koiné which, based on the Dniester dialect, developed by the early 20th c. (Shevelov 1989, 19). In the context of these debates, de-serving of attention is the evolution of the linguistic views of Ivan Franko. During the first discussion, Ivan Franko defended not only the multidia-lectal base of standard Ukrainian but also a possibility of multiple regional (dialectal) varieties of this language, a thesis which was fraught, according to Shevelov (1966, 63), with danger. In fact, Franko did not believe in the unity of standard Ukrainian, postponing this for the future, since “at the time being we do not have it yet and, due to the well-known, serious rea-sons, we cannot have it” (Franko 1891, 357). As a result, he paved the way for a kind of ‘multiple parochialism’ that differed from that of ‘one [east-ern] Ukrainian homestead’ propounded by the conservative purists in Russian-ruled Ukraine. In other words, Franko posited an equal status for multiple language varieties as observed in Galicia, Bukovyna, Transcarpa-thia, and Dnieper Ukraine which all had the right to develop indepen-dently in accordance with their internal laws. Attractive as it might look, the above theory was not likely to bring the Ukrainian nation together ei-ther in the ethno-linguistic or political sense.

As late as 1907, Franko changed his view arguing that new standard Ukrainian had to be based on the literary and linguistic tradition passed down by such Dnieper Ukrainian authors as Ivan Kotljarevs’kyj, Hryhorij Kvitka-Osnov’’janenko, Taras Ševčenko, and Ivan Nečuj-Levyc’kyj. To substantiate this thesis, he claimed that the Ukrainian language repre-sented a uniform system showing a lack of major dialectal differences in the whole of Ukraine. That was a language spoken by the majority of Ukrainians. Finally, the East Ukrainian variety was at that time cultivated by many gifted writers (Franko 1982).

Remarkably, Ukraine has recently experienced a revival of Franko’s theory of ‘multiple parochialism’ aimed at the creation, to use Duličenko’s terminology, of new ‘literary microlanguages’. Leaving aside rather barren recent efforts to invent a new Hucul standard language (Nimčuk 2013, 15), one should mention the ‘Polissian-Rusyn experiment’ initiated by Mykola Šyljahovyč and his followers in the 1980s in Belarus. Hailed enthusias-tically as a ‘new’ Slavic literary language (cf. Tolstoj 1990), ‘the West Polis-sian literary language’ covers both administratively and linguistically


Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland (Luft 1998, 141)10. Officiated in the late 1980s, this language is premised on the western Polissian dialects which have been routinely identified in scholarly literature as Ukrainian or tran-sitional from North Ukrainian to South Belarusian (Hancov 1924, 95-97; Žylko 1966, 138-140, 158). Discussing the transitional character of these dialects, Buzuk (1928, 4) argued that, should a new cultural center had emerged in this region, one could have easily created a ‘new Palessian lan-guage’ (novaja paleskaja mova).

The dialectal base of the West Polissian language is rather narrow, while encompassing some smaller dialects belonging to the central group of West Polissian, including those dialects spoken in the Ukrainian territo-ries11. The range of functional domains covered by this language is almost negligent – West Polissian is used primarily in poetry as well as few trans-lations (Duličenko 1995, 127; cf. “Novyj Zavet”). In sum, there are no grounds for viewing this newly created microlanguage as a ‘literary dialect’ (cf. Auty 1978), let alone a new standard language.

The year 1907 can be tentatively taken as a turning point in the history of the reciprocal influence between West and East Ukrainian, although the major role was still played by speakers of the Central Dnieper stan-dard. They would accept many innovations whose function was to ur-banize the standard language and to broaden its dialectal base from South-east to North to Southwest Ukrainian. This process accelerated and ex-panded in the years of struggle for independence in 1917-1920, and espe-cially during the period of Ukrainianization in the 1920s and early 1930s. Since the reunification of the Ukrainian ethnic lands in 1939, a complete reconciliation of the two cultural traditions and language programs has

10 Throughout this article, I use a Ukrainian-based name for this literary standard in-stead of the Russian-based terms commonly used in German- and English-language scholarship, cf. das Westpolessische (Luft 1998) and West Polesian (Duličenko 1995), cor-respondingly, next to Russian polesskij jazyk (Tolstoj 1990); cf. Belarusian paleskaja mova next to polis’ka mova (valoda) in West Polissian (“Novyj Zavet”, 5).

11 The dialectal base of West Polissian is characterized by ‘dotted localization’. For instance, Šyljahovyč premises his norm on the dialect of his native village Agdemer in the Brest region of Belarus. Another propagator of this language, Fjodar Klimčuk uses the dialect of Simanavičy belonging to the same, central group of West Polissian. For instance, Klimčuk resorted to this latter dialect in his translation of the New Testament which appeared in 2010 (“Novyj Zavet”). Some of the most representative phonological features of the West Polissian language are the lack of akanne, cekanne (cf. tybè next to Belarusian cjabe ‘you’ (acc.)) and dzekanne (cf. dèn’ next to Belarusian dzen’ ‘day’), the use of the prothetic h (cf. hozjora next to Belarusian azjorў ‘lakes’) and so forth (Luft 1998, 142-143). Remarkably, these and other features are typically viewed as northern Ukrai-nian (Shevelov 1979, 430, 755-757). One should add that some of them were used in standard Ukrainian as developed by Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819-1897), himself a speaker of North Ukrainian.


always remained acute. All this prompts us to agree with the idea of the regional spatial-temporal heterogeneity of standard Ukrainian (Danylenko 2009b) whose developmental scenario can be presented schematically as follows (Table 1, below).

Since 1991, the tendency to introduce new dialectal elements into stan-dard Ukrainian, as used especially in West Ukraine, has become pro-nounced along a linguistic space-time continuum from dialect to ‘regional

Period U k r a i n e w i t h i n t h e P o l i s h - L i t h u a n i a n

C o m m o n w e a l t h 16th-17th cc. Meletian

Church Slavonic [Polish] ‘old’ prostaja mova

(Southwest Ukrainian) A u s t r i a n / H u n g a -

r i a n U k r a i n e R u s s i a n U k r a i n e

18th-19th cc. Meletian Church Slavonic

[Polish/Hun-garian/

German/Ro-manian]

[Russian/ Church

Slavonic]

‘new’ prostaja mova

(North Ukrainian/ Southeast Ukrainian)

19th-20th cc. New (Vernacular) Standard Ukrainian (Southeast Ukrainian with other dialectal admixtures)

Table 1: The developmental scenario of standard Ukrainian lect’ (koiné) to standard language (Gricenko 2012, 30). However, save for a few extreme cases of regionalization aimed at the creation of new micro-languages, the overall trend in the current language situation in Ukraine has not changed – standard Ukrainian has been experiencing the ‘dialect Reconquista’ conducive to the introduction of looser norms within the ex-isting regional varieties and sub-varieties rather than to the creation of new standard microlanguages (Gricenko 2012, 28, fn. 34)12.

4. Building up a system of regional varieties of standard Ukrainian One can ask therefore a perfectly legitimate question as to how many re-gional varieties standard Ukrainian has today? To answer this question, it is useful to present standard Ukrainian as a sociolectal continuum contain-ing several spatial-temporal concentric areas which reflect its societal-poli-

12 Gricenko (2012, 31-34) cited 16 dialectal features which are widely used by western Ukrainian writers, cf. the Instrumental case ending -ov/-ev for feminines, the dual forms like dvi sopivci ‘two pipes,’ the archaic infinitive form of the type biči instead of standard bihty ‘to run,’ or the preterite auxiliary clitics like smy bula (f.) ‘I was,’ and others. Gricenko argued that the introduction of such local invariant features does not interfere in the systemic features and norms of standard Ukrainian as used in different regions of Ukraine.


tical pluricentricity. Each area is hierarchically organized so that smaller areas may be built on top or around each other. Tentatively, as was shown in section 3.2, the sociolectal continuum of standard Ukrainian as spoken within the Ukrainian ethnic territories falls into two major concentric areas. They represent the East Ukrainian and West Ukrainian regional varieties which constitute a national variety of standard Ukrainian. At the lower level of the organization of microareas, respectively the codification of ‘regional lects’, one needs to identify, for the West Ukrainian variety, the Galician-Bukovynian and Transcarpathian sub-varieties. The level of codification of these two sub-varieties seems to be different. The former one is traced back to the Galician-Bukovynian koiné (‘regional lect’). As an urban synthesis rather than a fusion of rural dialects, the Galician-Buko-vynian koiné is the most representative sub-variety of (the national variety of) standard Ukrainian (cf. Xobzej et al. 2009). The Transcarpathian sub-variety (‘literary Rusyn’) reveals a weaker level of its codification which can be compared with that of a ‘literary dialect’ in the shaping (cf. Auty 1978). Irrespective of its dialectal – Lemkian, Bojkian, Central Transcarpa-thian, or Hucul – foundation, the Transcarpathian sub-variety is largely based on a group of rural dialects permeated with Church Slavonic ele-ments as well as Russian, Polish, and Slovak borrowings.

In accordance with the latest attempts to codify its various regional sub-varieties spoken in Slovakia and Poland, the Transcarpathian sub-variety falls correspondingly into Lemko (Lemkian) Rusyn in Poland ([LR]), Slov-ak Rusyn in the Prešov region of Slovakia ([SR]), and Transcarpathian Rusyn in Ukraine ([TR]) (see Table 2). One should admit a very precari-ous state and status of these standards13. For instance, although officially launched on 27 January 1995 in Bratislava as a standard language with its

13 For a survey of linguistic publications, including dictionaries and grammars of the

Lemko, Prešov, Transcarpathian, and Vojvodinian Rusyn standards, see Pugh 2009, 9-11; a critical analysis of the Prešov standard as described by Pugh (2009), is offered in Danylenko (2014). The Transcarpathian standard is attested in a 6-volume dictionary of the local Rusyn language compiled by Jurij Čori (2002-2008). A significant contribution to the eastern Slavic lexicography, this work reveals, nevertheless, some serious short-comings and, therefore, can hardly be viewed as a normative publication. One should name, first of all, a limited dialectal foundation of the dictionary which seems to be pre-mised primarily on the author’s native dialect of the village Zubivka (Hungarian Fogaras, also Făgăraș in today’s Romania). The dictionary is also replete with Russian borrowings and suržyk forms which are not found in the central Transcarpathian dialect. Suffice it to cite her such a blatant Russianism as šutka used by Čori to explicate the local figlja ‘joke’, although Transcarpathian šutka denotes a catkin of the pussy willow (cf. Nimčuk 2013, 16-17). The same form with the same botanical meaning is attested in the Galician-Bukovynian koiné (cf. Želexovskyj 1886, 1028, 1102).


own orthographic rules14, Slovak Rusyn has demonstrated thus far a com-paratively low level of its codification since this language is used predomi-nantly in the countryside. The Rusyn-language instruction has recently decreased substantially (Plishkova 2009, 138); today the Rusyn classes are attended not more than by 500 students (Vaňko 2007, 86). There are only two printed periodicals published in the local Rusyn language as well as two public media serving the cultural needs of the Rusyn population (Plishkova 2009, 104; Vaňko 2007, 88). Despite some advancement in literature and theater, the local Rusyn variety is not used in the Greek Catholic Church which, having embraced Slovak, retained the Church Slavonic liturgy in some village parishes (Vaňko 2007, 93). Efforts to introduce Rusyn into pastoral practice have been largely supported by Fr. František Krajňák, on whose initiative the Catechism, Book of Acts of the Apostles and the Gospels were translated into Rusyn in the 1980s and published in the 1990s (Plishkova 2009, 121-122). Arguably, the language of these translations is a mere mix of various dialectal (rural) forms, thus de-monstrating a conspicuously low level of its codification (Nimčuk 2001, 384)15. A new, more ‘refined’ translation of the New Testament appeared in 2009, although the Prešov vernacular standard shows a motely of dia-lectal and vernacular features, including borrowings (cf. Danylenko 2014).

14 Initiated by the Institute of Rusyn Language and Culture in Prešov and financially

supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, the rules for Rusyn orthography were prepared by Jabur and Paňko (1994) who chose the use of secondary i in place of the etymological o and e as attested in the southern Lemkian dialect, as one of the representative features of a newly codified language (AUM, 2, maps 51, 52, 53; cf. Pugh 2009, 30-31). Consequently, strange as it may appear, the compilers created, in fact, a new variety of standard Ukrainian (Nimčuk 2013, 13). Quite in the same vein, a new variety of standard Ukrainian was ‘codified’ by Fontański and Chomiak (2000, 32-33).

15 Even more haphazard mixture of various dialectal forms and Russianisms is found in the grammar of the Rusyn language compiled by Fr. Dymytrij Sydor for the Rusyns living in Ukraine, Central Europe, and America (Sydor 2005); for a critical survey of Sydor’s codification, see Nimčuk (2013, 11-12). Emulating anachronistically his prede-cessors’ grammars, Sydor’s work is criticized even by some supporters of the ethnic and linguistic separateness of the Rusyns. Thus, although extolling Sydor’s contribution to the strengthening of Rusyn identity, Pfandl (2008) acknowledged Sydor’s incompetence in matters linguistic. In 2001, Nimčuk analyzed Sydor’s translation of some fragments from the Holy Scriptures and noted that the translator had randomly chosen different expressions from Church Slavonic, Russian, and his local dialect. Strikingly, the translator was poorly familiar with the local dialect, thus using numerous expressions unfamiliar to the local Rusyns, e.g., the demonstrative ot ‘(and) here’ instead of jse/yse/sese, the full accusative case form joho instead of the enclitic ho, the past participle uvidivši ‘having seen’ which does not exist in the local dialect, also a Russian borrowing načalnyk ‘chief’, which does not fit stylistically into the Biblical narrative, and many other erroneous forms (Nimčuk 2001).


However, the level of the codification of the Lemkian (Lemko), Trans-carpathian, and Slovak sub-varieties, used in the so-called peripheral eth-no-linguistic situations, is superseded by that of the Vojvodinian (Bačka-Srem) Rusyn language which has been used for dozens of years in an insular ethno-linguistic situation (cf. Duličenko 1995, 119). As one of the official languages in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia (Belić 2014), this language has acquired invariant features of a full-fledged standard language, whence its use in different functional domains (educa-tion, mass media, literature, entertainment, and so forth) (Tolstoj 1988, 266). Suffice it to mention that the first, very successful translation of the New Testament for private use (‘za pryvatne xasnovanje’) by Bishop Kyr Gabriel Bukatko was published in 1981 (Nimčuk 2001, 384). In general, having been used for a long period of time in an insular ethno-linguistic situation, Bačka-Srem Rusyn has achieved a rather high level of codifica-tion, tentatively comparable with the Galician-Bukovynian or even Cen-tral Dnieper sub-varieties of the Ukrainian national language.

Historically, the insular Vojvodinian Rusyn language is premised on the Lemkian dialects whose speakers began resettling from the Carpathian highlands (Hornjica) to Serbia and Croatia (eastern Slavonia) in the mid-dle of the 18th c. (Ramač 2004, 277). There was a second wave of the Uk-rainian immigrants who have come to this region mostly since the 1890s; the two groups are commonly identified today as different national minor-ities (Birnbaum 1981/1983, 40; Švagrovský 1984). Vojvodinian Rusyn is treated today in two ways. On the one hand, due to a large number of Slovakisms in its Lemkian dialectal base, Vojvodinian Rusyn is viewed by some scholars as a heterogeneous East Slavic language (Duličenko 1981, 14-15, 266). On the other hand, since Olaf Broch some linguists have been identifying this language as a kind of East Slovak (Lunt 1998, 68; cf. Bid-well 1966). Compromisingly, Duličenko (2006, 115, cf. 1981, 12) identified Vojvodinian Rusyn is ‘a dual reflexive language’ which demonstrates a tendency toward a genetic and typological bi-reflexiveness of both an east-ern and western Slavic language. However, as early as 1969, Horbač posited a thesis of ‘tri-reflexiveness’ of this language which allegedly com-bined features of southern Lemkian (East Slavic) and eastern Slovak (West Slavic) dialects together with some mixed dialects (cf. Birnbaum 1981/1983, 46-47)16. This areal supposition matches well with a typological

16 Emphasizing some mixed and transitional features in Vojvodinian Rusyn as well as other Rusyn standards can shed new light on the problem of their dialectal foundations (Hanudel’ 1994, 95-97). This possibility is discussed by Stegherr (2003, 114-115) who managed to sort out three theories about the origin of Vojvodinian Rusyn viewed respectively as an eastern Slavic language, a western Slavic idiom, and a transitional –eastern-western – Slavic system. However, Horbač’s opinion seems to be more calibrated


explanation offered by Vaňko (2007, 83), according to whom Rusyn and Slovak, despite their affinity in some grammatical features, belong to dif-ferent language groups. Furthermore, the morphosyntactic features shared by the Rusyn language (in Slovakia and Vojvodina) and Slovak are not the result of Slovak influence, but rather, relics of earlier periods in the evolution of the Slavic languages. As Vaňko (2007, 80) pointed out, this can merely mean that Slovak and Rusyn dialects in Transcarpathia and Vojvodina have both preserved the same or parallel morphological and syntactic features.

Yet the Rusyn vocabulary reflects several chronological layers in the development of this language (Birnbaum 1981/1983, 43). Reflecting its ‘pre-resettling history’, the Vojvodinian language contains a number of ol-der loan elements, including Hungarian borrowings (cf. pohar ‘a glass for drinking’), Germanisms (e.g., komora ‘store house’), Church Slavonicisms (cf. hospod’ ‘Lord’), a few Romanianisms of the type kljag ‘rennet bag’ (cf. Kushko 2007, 127)17. Having been in contact with Serbian for centuries, Vojvodinian Rusyn has also borrowed a substantial number of elements from this language as well which, nevertheless, does not allow for treating Vojvodinian Rusyn as a southern Slavic language. Instead, as has been suggested, one should view Vojvodinian Rusyn as a mixed or, rather, transitional system from the southern Lemkian to the eastern Slovak dia-lects with a number of multilayered borrowings, thus reflecting its codifi-cation in an insular ethno-linguistic situation since 1904. It is in that year that Havryjil Kostel’nyk sent to press his volume of poems titled “Z moho valala” (From my Village), generally considered the first publication in standard Rusyn (Ramač 2004, 278-279). Interestingly enough, in his 1923 grammar of local Rusyn, Kostel’nyk reflected on a mixed nature of his literary dialect, thus writing that his grammar was so designed as to open a path for a bookish Rusyn-Ukrainian language as well as for the Serbian and Croatian languages (Kostel’nik 1923, 4)

since it encompasses genetically (and typologically) different dialectal components. All in all, the discussion of the genetic relationship of Vojvodian Rusyn, treated today as an intrinsically mixed system, should be supplemented by an introduction of such notions as ‘transitional’ and ‘mixed’ dialects (cf. Wiemer and Erker 2012/2013)

17 Kushko (2007) cites these and other examples in order to corroborate a theory of non-eastern Slavic nature of the Vojvodinian Rusyn language. However, practically all of the examples adduced by Kushko are attested in most of the southwestern Ukrainian dialects, in particular in Transcarpathian (Danylenko 2009a, 2009c). The advocates of the separateness of Rusyn, found either in the peripheral or insular sociolinguistic situation, advance largely disparate arguments that fail to reflect an intricate relationship between the dialectal bases and literary traditions in the Rusyn lands.


Overall, the foregoing discussion of Vojvodinian Rusyn prompts us to view this language as a second national variety of standard Ukrainian rath-er than as a separate language based on a non-eastern Slavic base.

Finally, premised on the aforementioned societal-political and spatial-temporal characteristics of standard Ukrainian and its varieties, we are ready to profile standard Ukrainian (SU) as a hierarchically multilayered continuum which can be represented with the help of a tree diagram as construed below (Table 2, below).

The SU-node encompasses two nodes labeled as national varieties of standard SU – [NV1] and [NV2]. The subtree for the [NV1] contains the East Ukrainian (EU) and West Ukrainian (WU) regional varieties of SU. The West Ukrainian variety bifurcates into the Galician-Bukovynian (GB) and Transcarpathian (TR) sub-varieties. The latter node is expanded ten-tatively into three potential sub-varieties of Lemkian (Lemko) Rusyn [LR], Slovak (Prešov) Rusyn [SR], and Transcarpathian Rusyn in Ukraine [TR]

SU [NV1] [NV2] EU WU CD GB TR VR [LR] [SR] [TR] Table 2:. The system of national and regional varieties of standard Ukrainian

which all demonstrate the least level of codification among all the regional sub-varieties. As a multifunctional idiom, the Vojvodinian Rusyn sub-variety (VR) can be conceived of as the national variety [NV2] of SU (cf. Tolstoj 1990, 266) and tentatively placed at the same hierarchical level with the regional sub-varieties of (EU) and (WU), namely – (CD), (GB), and (TR).

5. Conclusion The proposed revised social typology of standard Ukrainian has advantage over the classifications offered by Gricenko (1993) and Matvijas (1998).

Having applied the triangulation model to the social typology of Ukrai-nian, we managed to outline a topological hierarchy of standard Ukrainian. This hierarchy allows for the regional varieties and sub-varieties of stan-dard Ukrainian to move, depending on the societal-political changes,


within the hierarchical system of that language. As reflected in the topo-logical hierarchy, standard Ukrainian is a pluricentric language which has undergone both centripetal and centrifugal codification. The strengthen-ing of centrifugal codification in the 20th c. brought about the formation of a second national variety, Vojvodinian Rusyn [NV2], long found in the insular ethno-linguistic situation. At the same time, the centripetal forces that were instrumental in the development of standard Ukrainian as [NV1] in the 18th and 19th cc. have conspicuously slackened their impact as a re-sult of the reunification of the Ukrainian ethnic lands in the 20th c.

All the above bears witness to a historical conservation of the current hierarchy of standard Ukrainian, including the level of codification of its regional sub-varieties, in spite of the ‘dialect Reconquista’ obtaining in the current language situation. This is why efforts to change the level of codi-fication for the regional sub-varieties of Transcarpathian Rusyn have not proved successful despite their prolonged development in the peripheral ethno-linguistic situation.

Bib l iography

AUM - Matvijas, I. et al. (eds.). 1988. Atlas ukrajins’koji movy v tr’ox tomax, vol. 2: Volyn’, Naddniprjanščyna, Zakarpattja i sumižni zemli; 2001, vol. 3: Slobožanščyna, Doneččyna, nyžnja Naddniprjanščyna, Pryčornomor’’ja i sumižni zemli. Kyjiv.

Auty, R. 1978. Literary Language and Literary Dialect in Medieval and Early Modern Sla-vonic Literatures. Slavonic and East European Review 56, 192-201.

Belić, B. 2014. Linguistic Vojvodina: Embordered Frontiers. In: Kamusella, T., M. Noma-chi (eds.). The Multilingual Society Vojvodina. Intersecting Borders, Cultures and Identities. Sapporo, 1-23.

Benedek, G. 2004. Madjarsko. In: Magocsi, P.R. (ed.). Rusyn’skўj jazўk. Opole, 365-374. Bidwell, Ch.E. 1966. The Language of the Bačka Ruthenian in Yugoslavia. The Slavic and

East European Journal 10, 32-45. Birnbaum, H. 1981/1983. What is Ukrainian in the Multilayered Speech of the Yugoslav

Rusini? In: Hursky, J.P. (ed.). Studies in Ukrainian Linguistics. In Honor of George Y. She-velov (The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US, Inc. 15/39-40). Clifton/NJ, 39-47.

Brozovič [Brozović], D. 1967. Slavjanskie standartnye jazyki i sravnitel’nyj metod. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 3-33.

Buzuk, P. 1928. Sproba linhvistyčnaje heohrafii Belarusi. Part 1: Fonetyka i morfolёhija. Mensk. Clyne, M. 1989. Pluricentricity: National Variety. In: Ammon, U. (ed.). Status and Func-

tion of Languages and Language Varieties. Berlin, 357-371. Csopei, L. 1883. Rutén-magyar szótár. Budapesten. Čaplenko, V. 1970. Istorija novoji ukrajinskoji literaturnoji movy (XVII ct.–1933 r.). New

York/NY. Danylenko, A. 2006. On the Name(s) of the prostaja mova in the Polish-Lithuanian Com-

monwealth. Studia Slavica Hungarica 51, 97-121. — 2008a. Polemics without Polemics: Myxajlo Andrella in Ruthenian (Ukrainian) Lite-

rary Space. Studia Slavica Hungarica 53, 123-146.


— 2008b. The Formation of New Standard Ukrainian: From the History of an Undeclar-ed Contest Between Right- and Left-Bank Ukraine in the 18th Century. Die Welt der Slaven 53, 82-115.

— 2008c. The New Ukrainian Standard Language (1798) – Between Tradition and In-novation. In: Bethin, Ch.Y. (ed.). American Contributions to the 14th Congress of Slavists in Ohrid, Macedonia, 2008, vol. 1: Linguistics. Bloomington/IN, 59-74.

— 2009a. Between the Vernacular and Slaveno-Rusyn: the Huklyvyj Chronicle and the Eighteenth-Century Rusyn Literary Language. Slavia Orientalis 59, 53-75.

— 2009b. Forward into the Past, or How to Particularize New Standard Ukrainian. Slavic and East European Journal 53/3, 471-476.

— 2009c. Myxajlo Lučkaj – a Dissident Forerunner of Literary Rusyn? Slavonic and East European Review 87, 201-226.

— 2010. The Ukrainian Bible and the Valuev Circular of 18 July 1863. Acta Slavica Iapo-nica 28, 1-21.

— 2011. Mykola Khanenko: “With a Dispatch of Seven Cucumbers Fresh…”: A Case Study of Linguistic Mentality in the Eighteenth-Century Hetmanate.” Harvard Ukrai-nian Studies, vol. 29/1-4 (2007): Ukrainian Philology and Linguistics in the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Michael S. Flier, 225-256.

— 2012. “Pyšy, jak movyš…”, abo čomu Pantelejmon Kuliš ne stav tvorcem sučasnoho ukrajins’koho pravopysu. Movoznavstvo 4, 37-54.

— 2014. Between an Imagined Language and a Codified Dialect. Acta Slavica Iaponica 35, 135-145.

— 2015. Iazychie and Surzhyk: Mixing Languages and Identities in the Ukrainian Border-lands.” In: Kamusella, T., M. Nomachi (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Lan-guages, Identities and Borders. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan (forthcom-ing).

— 2016. The “Bastard Tongue” and the “Doubling of Hallelujah”. The Ukrainian lan-guage Question in Russian Ukraine in the Years 1905-16. Harvard Ukrainian Studies (forthcoming).

Danylevs’ka, O. 2009. Mova v revoljuciji ta revoljucija v movi. Kyjiv. Dulichenko [Duličenko], A.D. 1981. Slavjanskie literaturnye mikrojazyki: voprosy formirova-

nija i razvitija. Tallinn. — 1995. The West Polesian Literary Language. In: Language, Minority, Migration: Year-

book 1994/1995 from the Centre for Multiethnic Research. Uppsala, 119-131. — 2006. The language of Carpathian Rus’: Genetic Aspects. In: Horbal, B., P.A. Krafcik,

E. Rusinko (eds.). Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Neighbors: Essays in Honor of Paul Robert Magocsi. Fairfax, 107-121.

Fellerer, J. 2005. Mehrsprachigkeit im galizischen Verwaltungswesen (1772-1914). Eine histo-risch-soziolinguistische Studie zum Polnischen und Ruthenischen (Ukrainischen). Köln.

Fontański, H., M. Chomiak. 2000. Gramatўka lemkivskoho jazўka. Katowice. Franko, I. 1891. Hovorymo na vovka, skažimo za vovka. Zorja (Lviv) 18, 356-358. — 1982. Literaturna mova i dialekty. In: Franko, I. Zibrannja tvoriv: u 50-ty tomax, t. 37.

Kyjiv, 205-211. Garvin, P.L. 1993. A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Language Standardization.

International Journal of the Sociology of Language 100/101, 37-54. Greščuk, V. 2010. Pivdenno-zaxidni dialekty v ukrajins’kij xudožnij movi. Narys. Ivano-

Frankivs’k. — 2012/2013. Hucul’s’kyj dialect u movi sučasnoji ukrajins’koji literatury. Ukrajinoznavči

studiji 13-14, 3-11.


Gricenko, P.E. [Hrycenko, P.Ju.]. 1993. Nekotorye zamečanija o dialektnoj osnove ukra-inskogo literaturnogo jazyka. In: Toporov, V.N. (ed.). Philologica slavica: k 70-letiju N. I. Tolstogo. Moskva, 284-294.

— 2012. Dialekty v sovremennoj jazykovoj situacii Ukrainy. In: Kalnyn’, Lj.É. (ed.). Issle-dovanija po slavjanskoj dialektologii 15. Moskva, 18-42.

Hancov, V. 1924. Dijalektolohična klasyfikacija ukrajins’kyx hovoriv. In: Zapysky Istoryč-no-Filolohičnoho Viddilu VUAN 4, 81-144.

Hanudel’, Z. 1994. Terytorial’ne členuvannja leksyčnoji systemy ukrajins’kyx hovirok Sxidnoji Slovaččyny. In: Hrycenko, P.Ju. (ed.). Problemy sučasnoji areolohiji. Kyjiv, 95-110.

Havránek, B. 1964. On the Comparative Structural Studies of Slavic Standard Languages. In: Travaux linguistiques de Prague 1, 59-66.

Horbač, O. 1969. Literaturna mova bačvans’ko-srims’kyx ukrajinciv (“rusyniv”). Zapysky Naukovoho Tovarystva im. Ševčenka 169, 265-282.

Jabur, V., Ju. Paňko. 1994. Pravyla rusyn’skoho pravopysu. Prešov. Kostel’nik, G. [Kostel’nyk, H.]. 1923. Hramatika bačvans’ko-ruskej bešedi. Srem. Kushko, N. 2007. Literary Standards of the Rusyn Language: the Historical Context and

Contemporary Situation. Slavic and East European Journal 51, 111-132. Luft, A. 1998. Das Westpolessische. In: Rehder, P. (ed.). Einführung in die slavischen Spra-

chen. Darmstadt, 141-143. Lunt, H.G. 1998. Notes on the Rusin Language of Yugoslavia and its East Slovak Origins.

Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 42, 43-84. Magocsi, P.R. (ed.). 1996. A New Slavic Language Is Born. New York. Marvan, J. 1988. Vojvodina’s Rusinian in Relation to Other Slavic Standard Languages.

New Zealand Slavonic Journal 1, 39-46. Masenko, LT. 1995. Do problemy spadkojemnosti staroji pysemnoji tradyciji v novij

ukrajins’kij movi. Movoznavstvo 4/5, 39-45. Matvijas, I. 1996. Varianty ukrajins’koji movy v kinci XVIII i v XIX st. Kul’tura slova

48/49, 11-28. — 1998. Varianty ukrajins’koji literaturnoji movy. Kyjiv. Mečkovskaja, N.B. 2004. Prostranstvennye i xronologičeskie parametry v social’noj tipo-

logii slavjanskix jazykov: glubina dialektnoj differenciacii jazyka i vremja formirova-nija ego ètničeskogo naddialektnogo standarta. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 53, 259-289.

Mel’nikov, G.P. 2003. Sistemnaja tipologija jazykov. Moskva. Nimčuk, V.V. 2000. Zakarpac’kyj hovir. In: Rusanivs’kyj, V.M. et al. (eds.). Ukrajins’ka

mova. Encyklopedija. Kyjiv, 174-176. — 2001. Ukrajins’ki dialektni pereklady Sv. Pys’ma. In: Sučasni problem movoznavstva ta li-

teraturoznavstva. Zbirnyk naukovyx prac’ 4: Ukrajins’ke i slov’jans’ke movoznavstvo. Užho-rod 383-389.

— 2013. ‘Kodyfikuvaty’ novi literaturni movy? Zberehty j zaxystyty ukrajins’ki hovory! Ukrajins’ka mova 3, 3-26.

Novyj Zavet – Novyj Zavet. Perevid na zapadnopolesskij govor: selo Cimonoviči Drogičinskogo rajona Brestskoj oblasti Belarusi. Perevod vypolnil Klimčuk Fёdor Danilovič […]. 2010. Minsk.

Pfandl, H. 2008. Die Windischen der Ukrainer oder die Kurden Europas? Wiener Slawis-tisches Jahrbuch 54, 105-123.

Plishkova, A. 2009. Language and National Identity: Rusyns South of Carpathians. New York.


Pugh, St.M. 2009. The Rusyn Language. A Grammar of the Literary Standard of Slovakia With Reference to Lemko and Subcarpathian Rusyn. München.

Ramač, J. [Ramać]. 2004. Vojvodina. In: Magocsi, P.R. (ed.). Rusyn’skўj jazўk. Opole, 277-304.

Rehder, P. 1995. Standardsprache: Versuch eines dreistufigen Modells. Die Welt der Sla-ven 40, 352-366.

Rusinko, E. 2003. Straddling Borders: Literature and Identity in Subcarpathian Rus’. Toronto. Schenker, A.M., E. Stankiewicz (eds.). 1980. The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and

Development. New Haven/CT. Shevelov, G.Y. 1966. Die ukrainische Schriftsprache. 1798-1965. Wiesbaden. — 1979. A Historical Phonology of the Ukrainian Language. Heidelberg. — 1980. Ukrainian. In: Schenker, A.M., E. Stankiewicz (eds.). The Slavic Literary Lan-

guages: Formation and Development. New Haven/CT, 143-60. — 1989. The Ukrainian Language in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (1900-1941). Its

State and Status. Cambridge/MA. Stegherr, M. 2003. Das Russinische. München. Sydor, D. 2005. Hrammatyka rusyns'koho jazўka dlja rusynov Ukrajny, Central'noji Jevro-

pў y Amerykў. Užhorod Švagrovský, Š. 1984. K otázke genézy a konštituovania jazyka juhoslovanských Rusínov

(Rusniakov). Slavica slovaca 19, 248-263. Taranenko, O. 2013. Mova ukrajins’koji zaxidnoji diaspory i sučasna movna sytuacija v

Ukrajini (na zahal’noslov’’jans’komu tli). Movoznavstvo 2-3, 63-99. — 2014. Ukrainisch-russischer Suržyk: Status, Bewertungen, Tendenzen, Prognosen. In:

Hentschel, G. et al (eds.). Trasjanka und Suržyk – gemischte weißrussisch-russische und ukrainisch-russische Rede. Frankfurt a.M., 265-387.

Tkač, L. 2000. Ukrajins’ka literaturna mova na Bukovyni v kinci XIX – na počatku XX sto-littja, vol. 1: Materialy do slovnyka. Černivtsi.

— 2007a. Ukrajins’ka literaturna mova na Bukovyni v kinci XIX – na počatku XX stolittia, vol. 3: Bukovyns’ka frazeolohija u mižmovnyx zv´jazkax ta v zahal’noukrajins’komu kon-teksti. Černivci.

— 2007b. Ukrajins’ka literaturna mova na Bukovyni v kinci XIX – na počatku XX stolittia, vol. 2: Džerela i sociokul’turni čynnyky rozvytku. Černivci.

Tolstoj, N.I. 1988. Istorija i struktura slavjanskix jazykov. Moskva. — 1990. Novyj slavjanskij literaturnyj mikrojazyk? In: Res Philologica: Filologičeskie isledo-

vanija pamjati akad. G.V. Stepanova. Moskva, 265-272. Trávníček, F. 1952. Slovník jazyka českého, 4th ed. Prague. Udvari, I. 2000. Obrazčiky z istoriji pudkarpats’kyx Rusynuv. XVIII. Stolїtije. Izhljadovanja z

istoriji kul’tury i jazyka. Užhorod. Vaňko, J. The Rusyn language in Slovakia: Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Inter-

national Journal of the Sociology of Language 183, 75-96. Voss, Ch., L. Jusufi. 2013. Plurizentrik im Albanischen sowie im Serbokroatischen und

seinen Nachfolgesprachen. In: Müller, D., M. Wingender (eds.). Typen slavischer Stan-dardsprachen. Theoretische, methodische und empirische Zugänge. Wiesbaden, 177-195.

Wiemer, B., A. Erker. 2012/2013. Übergangs- und Mischdialekte – eine unnötige begriff-liche Differenzierung? Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie 69, 1-54.

Wiemer, B., I. Seržant, A. Erker. 2014. Convergence in the Baltic-Slavic Сontact Zone. Triangulation Approach. In: Besters-Dilger, J. et al. (eds.). Congruence in Contact-In-duced Language Change. Berlin, Boston, 15-42.


Wingender, M. 1998. Standardsprachlichkeit in der Slavia: Eine Überprüfung des Be-griffsapparates. Zeitschrift für Slawistik 43, 127-139.

—2013. Modell zur Beschreibung von Standardsprachentypen. In: Müller, D., M. Win-gender (eds.). Typen slavischer Standardsprachen. Theoretische, methodische und empirische Zugänge. Wiesbaden, 19-37.

Xobzej, N. et al. 2009. Leksykon l’vivs’kyj: považno i na žart. L’viv. Želexovskyj, Je. 1886. Ruthenisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch, vols. 1-2. Lemberg. Žylko, F.T. 1966. Narysy z dialektolohiji ukrajins’koji movy. Kyjiv.

New York Andrii Danylenko ([email protected])

Regional Varieties of Standard Ukrainian

Documents

Transcript of Regional Varieties of Standard Ukrainian