Information on the thesis

The dissertation is devoted to the research of morphological variability of
nominative parts of speech in Ivan Franko’s poetic works in the context of individual and
social language processes. It is for the first time in Ukrainian linguistics that the analysis
of word-changing peculiarities of nouns, adjectives, pronouns in the plane of variability in
all lifelong poetic collections of the writer is carried out on a wide exhaustive factual
material (1876, 1887, 1893, 1896, 1911, 1890, 1900, 1906, 1911, 1914).
A set of theoretical issues related to the study of the concept of variability is
generalized. The criteria of morphological variability are developed and applied in the
process of studying changes in I. Franko’s poetic work. It was found that through the prism
of variance it is possible to interpret the processes of formation of the Ukrainian literary
language of the late XIX – early XX centuries.
The variation in the word-changing system of Western and Eastern Ukrainian
variants was analyzed on the basis of grammars of the second half of thr XIX – early XX
centuries, in particular in S. Smal- Stotskyi, F. Gartner, Ye. Tymchenko, V. Simovych in
which two variants of the Ukrainian literary language can be traced.
It is considered how I. Franko comprehended the processes of literary language
creation in the theoretical and practical aspects (this is reflected in his works «Let’s talk
about the wolf – let’s say about the wolf», «Literary language and dialects»). The writer
independently edited his works, cleaned from narrow dialects, looked for word forms that
would be the best. Standing on the path of convergence of the Galician language to the
Dnieper, the poet not only accepted the morphological features of the East, but also
introduced many Western features.
The main factors that led to the emergence of morphological variants in the poems
of Ivan Franko are outlined: 1) different socio-political (external) and dialectal (internal)
conditions in which the formation of literary language in Galicia and Great Ukraine were
taking place, which led to differences in regional norms, and hence the existence of two
variants of the literary language – Western Ukrainian and Eastern Ukrainian; 2) the
absence of a single literary language and common language norms; 3) the influence of
territorial dialects, namely the Galician-Bukovinian group of dialects of the south-western
dialect; 4) the requirements of rhyming, which are inherent in poetic works.
Linguistic evolution is traced in the context of analysis of morphological variants of
noun parts of speech and the poet’s consistent refusal of narrow spoken forms in favor of
normative for western and eastern Ukrainian variants of literary language, except for cases
caused by rhyming that testifies to Ivan Franko’s attempt to join the creation of a standard
system of declension of the Ukrainian literary language. The replacement of literary forms
by colloquial ones, which permeate poetic works from the first to the last collection,
testifies to the manifestation of tolerance for dialectal speech in the understanding of
Kameniar. In the context of this work, two Franko’s vectors are traced: the desire to
integrate into the Eastern Ukrainian version and, at the same time, the attempt to bring the
language of Galicians beyond regional borders and to join the national literary one.
Key words: variance, variant, grammatical variance, morphological variant, word
change, word form, noun parts of speech (noun, adjective, pronoun), declension paradigm.