Information on the thesis

The thesis investigates the functioning of the pluperfect forms in German and
Ukrainian  on  the  basis  of  comparative  and  typological  analysis.  The  research
examines  the  key  positions  in  the  treatment  of  pluperfect  forms  in  the  compared
languages  and  justifies  their  linguistic  status  in  the  system  of  grammatical  tense
category in modern German and Ukrainian. In general the pluperfect is a temporal
form, which expresses the precedence in the past, that is the indication that the action
(or  its  result)  had  occurred  before  any  other  action  in  the  past  (“reference  point”),
which  is  in  the  limelight  of  the  speaker  and  is  explicitly  indicated  in  the  text.
However, according to the linguistic researches the pluperfect can also be used in its
absolute meaning, so it can be described as absolutely relative tense form.
The base of the work is a concept that involves identifying differences between
grammemes, determining the semantic structure of these forms as a set of functional
possibilities that are realized at the text level. When determining the functions of the
pluperfect  forms  in  both  languages  the  following  criteria  were  taken  into
consideration:  semantics  of  the  verbal  predicate  realized  in  the  pluperfect  form,
context,  meanings  which  these  forms  obtain  from  contextual  load,  functions
performed by these forms at the text level. According to these positions the following
supposition was made: the quantity of the meanings of the pluperfect forms depends
directly on the depth of the context.
Based  on  the  functional-semantic  approach,  the  following  semantic  and
stylistic  functions  (taxis,  reference  to  the  actual  result  in  the  past, reference  to  the
unfulfilled  past  situations,  retrospective,  compositional  and  stylistic,  degressive,
evidential,  experiential)  and  the  modal  functions  (counterfactual;  modality  of  the
possibility, necessity and intention; modality of desirability and courtesy) are taken
into account.
The analysis of the factual material demonstrates that the nuclear functions for
the pluperfect in German are: the function of reference to the actual result in the past
and  the  taxis  function.  For  the  pluperfect  in  Ukrainian  the  following  functions  are
typical: the retrospective function and the function of unfulfilled past situation. For
the last one Ukrainian language has the additional form of expression – with the help
of the particle bulo, which together with the phase or modal verbs implicitly indicates
that the ‘normal’ development of the course of events is interrupted and the desired
action does not achieve its ultimate goal.
Promising for the further research is to establish the semantic connotations of
the  pluperfect  forms  in  German  and  Ukrainian  in  the  spoken  language.  A  global
perspective  is  to  establish  the  areal-semantic  map  of  pluperfect  forms  in  different
languages.
Key words: pluperfect, function,  text, discourse,  modality,  counterfactuality,
comparative and typological analysis.