CASE FORMS OF NOUNS IN ULAS SAMCHUK’S NOVEL «MARIA» AND MODERN GRAMMATICAL NORMS

Abstract

The article examines the case forms of nouns in Ulas Samchuk’s novel «Maria» from the perspective of modern linguistic norms. In recent decades, we have observed significant variability in the use of case endings of nouns in the modern Ukrainian language, due to the restoration or activation of many ancient forms. The novel «Maria» by the prominent Ukrainian writer Ulas Samchuk, written in 1933 was chosen exactly for confirmation of the continuity of the grammatical tradition.
The proposed study examines the case forms of the dative, accusative, locative, and vocative cases. It was found that the most of the case forms of nouns recorded in the novel are normative even today: the ending of the dative case of masculine nouns -ові, -еві (-єві), which actively displacе the ending -у(-ю), are increasingly penetrating the system of neuter nouns; a significant spread of genitive case forms in the function of the accusative in nouns – names of non-beings; variant forms of the local case (masculine and neuter nouns) in -у and -і in constructions with the preposition по; consistent use of vocative case forms in appeals; alternation of consonants г, к, х in the local and vocative cases. Some case forms of nouns observed in the analyzed novel are used less frequently in modern linguistic practice, while others are qualified as dialectal. It is concluded that the case forms of nouns used in Ulas Samchuk's novel «Maria» reflect the grammatical norms of the Ukrainian language of the first half of the 20th century, many of which were artificially brought closer to the norms of the Russian language in the following decades or relegated to the periphery of the language system due to the socio-political situation. «Ukrainian Spelling» 2019, by bringing back to life some features of the spelling of 1928, renewed the Ukrainian orthographic tradition, which is clearly evidenced by the work of Ulas Samchuk.