UKRAINIAN PHYSICAL TERMS IN POPULAR SCIENSE BOOK OF IVAN PULUI “NEW AND VARIABLE STARS”

Abstract

Physics is an old science but it still needs to create new terms and notions. Forming of new words in scientific language is of particular importance for Ukrainian language because during its existence it came under influence of other languages, which formed different tendencies in the functioning of physical lexis, as, for r example over-use of internationalisms and Russian elements.
Ivan Pul’uj is a world known physicist and electrical engineer who made a great contribution in the development of world science. Despite that for all his life he worked abroad, in Austria and Czechia, he wrote his most outstanding works in Ukrainian and published them in the national scientific magazines. Naturally, this made him to create new terms and implement then into glossary of the young Ukrainian science of that time.
Native Ukrainian terms predominate in the Ivan Pului’s book “New and Variable Stars” (1905). The author brought Ukrainian words that functioned in colloquial speech, into scientific sphere, which made the physical phenomena which were explained, more understandable. In some cases he also used dialect affixes to form new complex lexemes. Some physical terminological word-combinations are more meaningful than modern Ukrainian ones whereas there are constructions formed by means of verbal suffixes -уч-/-юч-, but functioning of such formants remains disputable in modern national linguistics.
There is a group of lexical units in the book, which have phonetic and semantic equivalents in other Slavic languages (Polish, Czech, and Slovakian). The scientist brought them into the language of science, but obviously he preferred to use the words that had Ukrainian national authenticity. Some terms in the book are equivalent to internationalisms. I. Pul’uj used both Ukrainian and foreign variants as synonymic in the context.
Unless the most of terms studied in this work are not used in modern Ukrainian terminology, we consider that these words may be successfully implemented into modern scientific language since they are brief, have clear semantics, and are formed by means of derivative elements which are typical for our language.