Information on the thesis

The  thesis  is  the  first  comprehensive  study  of  the  Pronoun  in  the  Ukrainian
language of the XVI–XVII centuries. The tirst part of work summarizes different views
on the status of the Pronoun as a part of speech, presents the history of formation of the
concept Pronoun from the first Ukrainian grammars to modern linguistic works.
The research is based on the corpus of texts of XVI–XVII centuries. Ukrainian
pronouns are found in the texts of various genres. The pronouns were analyzed from
the point of view of semantics and grammar as well as their origin. The work presents
the paradigm of case forms, syntactic role of the personal and possessive pronouns in
the sentence. It also offers a comparative analysis the functioning of pronouns in the   20
Ukrainian language of the XVI–XVII century, in the other Slavic languages of the same
period  and  modern  Ukrainian  literary  language,  including  its  dialects.  The  author
argues that the Ukrainian pronouns had a well-developed and complete structure at that
period. The pronouns have ancient Slavic origin; most of them actively function in the
contemporary Ukrainian language.
The  following  specific  semantic  contexts  of  personal  pronouns  were  identified:
personal pronouns in the religious-theological texts of XVI–XVII centuries, pointing to
beings – the personages of the text of the Holy Bible  and Evangelical traditions, this
traditions had generalized to secular people; personal pronouns in polemical texts of
XVI–XVII centuries pointing to living beings and not living beings; personal pronouns
in the business documents of XVI–XVII centuries pointing to only to persons staying
in the family or friendly relationship, clerical persons, having different social status and
occupation; personal pronouns in the artistic and chronicle texts of XVI–XVII centuries
pointing to creatures humans and animals; and to not living beings that are related with
spiritual life of christians.
The following could be presented by the processed sources, semantic database of
possessive pronouns of XVI–XVII centuries: indication of belonging to some person;
belonging to the family, friends; an action carried out, performed by the same person or
by itself and others.
The  full  case  paradigm  of  personal  and  possessive  pronouns  were  observed.
Availability  of  suppletive  forms of personal  pronouns  in direct  cases  in the texts of
XVI–XVII  centuries,  their  graphic,  phonetic  variants,  full  and  short  forms  in  the
accusative, ablative and local cases were found.
Compared to the modern system, in the XVI–XVII centuries the basis of system of
Ukrainian pronouns consisted of a greater number of options of linguistic units. The
following stages of the language development confirm tendency to the unification of
forms of pronouns. Thus, in the modern Ukrainian language рronouns have a clearer
paradigm  of  inflections.  Many  polite  phrases  with  the  pronouns  from  business
documents of XVI–XVII centuries have not been preserved in the modern Ukrainian
language.
Key  words:  Pronoun,  personal  рronouns,  possessive  рronouns,  Grammar,
Semantics, paradigmatic relations, syntagmatic relations, written monuments.