ORIGINS OF THE UKRAINIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE POLISH HYPOTHESIS ON GENESIS POLISH LITERARY LANGUAGE

The analysis of discussions, regarding the creation of the Polish literary language, has become a powerful stimulus for creating a completely new point of view on the beginnings of the Ukrainian literary language. This article proposes a new approach to research into Ukrainian literary standard. This term - much better than the somewhat outdated term "literary language", suggesting a certain artistry of the author's utterance - is, however, still used in parallel with the generally accepted term literary language. The authors start from the theory created by Stanislaw Urbanczyk and developed by Bohdan Walczak, according to which one can speak about literary language with the emergence of the first norm. The norm of the Ukrainian literary language has undoubtedly been created for many centuries and taking into account various cultural influences. However, undoubtedly its origins can be traced back to the period of Kyivian Rus. Similarly to Latin for Polish language, the Church Slavonic language for Ukrainian became an incentive to create one's own literary standard. The process of shaping the Polish and Ukrainian standards, however, was not the same. Incomprehensible to the ancestors of today's Poles, Latin forced the creation of a completely separate system that only used Latin lexis. Not completely understood by the ancestors of today's Ukrainians, for some time Church Slavonic language was a sufficient means of literary expression. However, from the very beginning (i.e. from the 11th-11th centuries) there are visible attempts to adapt this language to local pronunciation, which can be treated as the first attempts to create a general language norm. The oldest texts in the Church Slavonic language reflect the most characteristic features of the Ukrainian language, which today are the norm of the language. In this approach, they should be treated as the oldest monuments of the Ukrainian literary language.

Introductory remarks. According to the long-established theory of Slavic linguistics, it is still commonly believed that in Ruthenia, at least until the 14th century, the literary Old Ruthenian written language was common for Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians. In accordance with this theory, supported primarily by the authority of Russian linguists I. Sreznevsky, O. Vostokov, O. Sobolevsky, O. Shakhmatov, V. Vinogradov, F. Filin and others, the history of Eastern Slavic literary languages (at least Belarusian and Ukrainian ) began only from the 14th century on. The Russian language literary tradition, on the contrary, by means of terminological conceptual substitution and false synonymy -«Rusian language» (for Ruthenian), «Old Russian language» (a modern term denoting the language of ancient scribes, which herewith is aimed at pointing to a direct connection with the term «Russian language -seems to descend from the Rus' times. From this perspective, written records of this time, which contain not only Russian but also inherent Ukrainian and Belarusian language features, are exploited to construct textbooks and dictionaries of the so-called "Russian language of the 11th-14th centuries» 1 . However, since the earliest times local dialectal features of certain East-Slavic languages were penetrating into the texts. Therefore, even Church Slavonic written records can be described as different local versions thereof. Recorded features of a scribe's native dialect (Kyiv Rus', Galician Rus', Volyn Rus', Polotsk Rus', Novhorod Rus') obviously became the impetus for local writing development, and as a consequence -for a separate literary language tradition.
We proceed from the thesis that the dialectic space of Eastern Slavs was differentiated in the most ancient written period (11th-13th centuries). The basis for understanding the linguistic space of the Rus' in this period is Yuri Shevelyov's approach about 5 macrozones, or according to the scientist's terminology «linguistic territorial regional units»: Novgorod -Tver, Polotsk -Smolensk, Murom-Ryazan, Kyiv -Polissya, Halych -Podillya served the basis for the consecutive three Eastern Slavic languages [16, с. 389, 392].
Thus, in a broader context, one of the objectives of the study is to verify the thesis, prevailing in historical linguistics, stating that before the 14th century Old Ruthenian had existed as a common language, unified for all Eastern Slavs. A detailed analysis of the records, which have not yet been described, and the new reading of the monuments previously described, suggests that in this writing we see evident attempts to display scribes' speech features. Inasmuch such attempts/mistakes become increasingly numerous, it is obvious that they are not sporadic, but indicative of the deliberate attempt to introduce a spoken usus into the text, and subsequently to create a new linguistic norm.
It should be emphasized that in reference to the Ukrainian language glotogenesis, the thesis about the historical period of the national language functioning (Old Ukrainian) and prehistoric (proto-Ukrainian) has become obvious [10, с. 5-8], since the appearance of a linguistic feature in the written record is indicative of its much sooner establishment in speech. Spoken norms of each national language are developed gradually, alongside with the formation and development of that language. Initially, they are usually formed as certain «usage» of the dialect which due to certain historical conditions, forms the basis for the national language. Orthoepic and orthographic traditions are closely intertwined. Pronunciation of a particular language native speaker, having got into the written form (into a record), over time influences further spelling tradition. Importantly, this usus can get into the texts of both the (native) language of a certain ethnic group and to the texts written in other (foreign) languages by representatives of that particular ethnic group. Therefore, any written material is important to understand the origins of a particular language structure and such material does not necessarily have to be from the written sources of that language. For example, in order to study the Polish language development, evidence from the 12th century records in Latin is important; for Ukrainian -from Church Slavonic in Ruthenian-Ukrainian version of the 11th century (written by Ruthenian Ukrainians on Rus'-Ukraine territory), etc. Therefore, logically: Church Slavonic texts of the Ruthenian version of the most ancient period, created in Kyiv scriptorium (Reims Gospel of the 11th century, Sviatoslav's Anthologies (Izborniks), 1073, 1076, Archangel Gospel, 1092), can prove the thesis that local Ruthenian scribes left in them (in texts) features of their mother tongue and thus gave reasons for language researchers to draw conclusions about the rise of the language structure.
The rise of literary languages is quite a different matter. For many nations, periodization of the national and literary languages does not coincide (the rise of the national language always precedes that of the literary one). Moreover, many national linguistic literary traditions are based on vernacular language: a particular dialect of a national language that meets the needs of the society at the time. Here new questions arise: what is the convergence / divergence of the next stages of literary language development? How considerable is the continuity tradition for a particular literary written Eastern Slavic language and when does it begin? For example: is the New Ukrainian period of the literary language, starting with Kotlyarevskyi's «Aeneid» an actual new tradition in the Ukrainian literary language development or it also continues the previous one, which was initiated during the period of Kyiv Rus', the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? [17] Basically, does modern Ukrainian literary language have an Old Ruthenian (11th-13th c.) period in its development history? Yes or No?
Hence, there is another crucial problem for understanding a Ukrainian any other literary language origin: how shall a literary language be described? Does the current definition of «literary language» fit different stages of its formation?
By coming closer to answering these questions, we can get closer to developing a new perspective on the development of Ukrainian literary language.
As a starting point for studying the literary norm development for the Ukrainian and other languages, one can use cultural studies of identity categories as well as those, which allocate distinctions between the «my» and «foreign» system lies in self-awareness through the carriers of this ethnolect, the fact of their separate language functioning. The final stage of this process iswith obvious opportunities that ensure the existence of a power cell, that alongside with it is a culture cell -the desire to adopt a certain orthography, which will confirm the separation of this language. Extralingual aspects herewith become especially important, namely separation issue for a language is primarily a social and political matter (Max Weinreich's citation: «language is a dialect which has an army and a navy»).
Orthography implementation itself is a long-term process: language norm and literary tradition can be undergoing adjustments for centuries, since the interaction between language oral and written speeches is the subject of ongoing discussions among scientific and educated society layers: język literacki to nieco już przestarzała nazwa języka ogólnego, inaczej -standardowego (dawniej jego nośnikiem była literatura (stąd jego nazwa), dziś przede wszystkim prasa i inne media). Główna odmiana języka narodowego, ukształtowana w toku rozwoju kultury, nauki i piśmiennictwa, użyciem słownictwa i gramatyki rządzą w języku literackim normy ustalone przez tradycję [18, c. 68; 20, c. 208]. The above mentioned speculations lead to the conclusion that a norm is the key concept of a literary language. The concept of a «norm» at the initial stage of its formation is of particular importance, therefore it (the norm) is subject to studies in the field of literary languages genesis.
In general, most approaches, interpretations, and visions of a literary language origin and understanding the essence of the expression «ancient functioning period» of any literary language can be reduced to different and sometimes contradictory provisions: Only high (sermons, religious literature) and medium (chronicles, fiction) register samples should be included into the scope of a literary language.
When analysing the processes of norm formation, as well as literary language formation, any written implementation where such a norm is detected, can be used.
Only the written form, displaying elementary features of local language usage (which must be carefully identified, counted and noted) can be attributed to a literary language: whether there are certain tendencies among scribes to introduce local vernacular usus (but without grammars and dictionaries).
Only the written form, which is already fixed in grammars, literary books and lexicons, can be attributed to a literary language.
Not only written but also oral forms of supra-dialectal speech, reflected in folklore can be attributed to a literary language 2 .
Consideration of the expressed approaches testifies to the need to develop a unified approach, which would standardize the specifics of a literary languages development (in our case -of Ukrainian) at its different functioning stages.
We consider Bohdan Walczak's «minimalist» approach, regarding the discussion on the Polish literary language formation to be the most logical and reasonable.
According to his «maximalist» concept, the existence of a literary language can be acknowledged when it has three features: 1) this language is normalized; 2) highly artistic samples 2  of belles-lettres writing have been created in this language; 3) this language is an instrument of the entire spiritual culture for the people.
The researcher, however, suggests rejecting the artistic element (that is, the great artistic value in the literary works) as a subjective opinion [23, c. 39], as well as the fact of the language existence as the only spiritual communication means for the people (e.g.: equivalent functioning of Polish and Latin on the territory of the Commonwealth, as well as ancient Greek was not comprehensible on the vast territory of ancient Greece) [ The fact that the emergence of a literary language must be linked to the emergence of the first linguistic norm [22, c. 97-10] shall be the base for the further study of the Ukrainian literary language rise.

Church Slavonic Texts as a Source for Studying the Rise of the Ukrainian Literary Language.
Many scholars still do not see the importance of the most ancient Church Slavonic texts for the study of Eastern Slavic literary languages. They primarily study phonetic, morphologic, lexical, or syntactic features that are interpreted within the scope of research aimed at tracing pronunciation of the ancestors of modern Belarusians, Russians, or Ukrainians. Of course, we do not question the role and importance of such research. Regarding functioning of the Church Slavonic language in Ruthenia, it is worth emphasizing other factors related to cultural and social life of Kyiv Rus' and, in a wider context, to Central and Eastern Europe of the 10th-14th centuries.
The language situation in Slavic countries of Latin culture (Poland, Czech Republic) and the orthodox culture (Ukraine, Belarus) differed, since Latin and Church Slavonic occupied different positions in the minds of their users. Latin was completely unclear to the Western Slavs (and was perceived as completely foreign); Church Slavonic language was relatively clear and generally not perceived as completely alien.
That is, the Church Slavonic was not as alien and unacceptable to educated Ruthenian Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians, as, for example, Latin for Poles and Czechs.
It is this «relative clarity» of the Church Slavonic that led to its penetration into almost all life spheres of Ruthenians.
It is now a disputable question, whether the scribes of the oldest Church Slavonic texts were randomly mistaken, thus injecting vernacular Ukrainian peculiarities, or they deliberately introduced Ukrainian vernacular features into the text. From the 14 th century on, especially in the 15 th century, we have Church Slavonic written records, where the scribes introduced not only certain phonetic or morphological features into the text, but even created whole fragments (several pages) now not in Church Slavonic, but in Ruthenian. Undoubtedly, in such a situation, one can say about the conscious activity of a scribe who introduced his Ruthenian Ukrainian norm throughout the structure of a different language for his understanding -Church Slavonic.
For example Menology of 1489 illustrates entire sheets of text in Ruthenian Ukrainian (not Church Slavonic), written by a Ruthenian scribe, as shown in the following fragment: The question when such an awareness and understanding of the own language differentness from the Church Slavonic appeared, currently remains unanswered. The answer may lie in the analysis of the detected dialectal phenomena (especially their quantitative registration). Since in church text copies, we find from several hundred to thousands of «mistakes», so apparently, the scribes were deliberately creating the local Ruthenian Ukrainian norm.
Proceeding from what has been mentioned, we suggest the thesis about the existence of not only three separate linguistic structures in the Rus' period -Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian, but also of the corresponding literary languages.
We conduct the search for the origins of Eastern Slavs' literary languages on the basis of certified linguistic phenomena, which at the time of writing were a local usus, and subsequently became the norm and revealed in written records, created in specific territories, where their ancestors mostly lived: for Ukrainian -Kyiv -Polissya and Galicia -Podillya lands, for Belarusian -Smolensk -Polotsk and partly Polissya, for Russian -Novgorod -Tver and Murom -Ryazan. For some regions, there was obviously no direct perspective on this or that language. At the borders of Polissya and Smolensk (Ukrainian -Belarusian contacts), Polotsk and Novgorod (Belarusian -Russian contacts) dialects, interpenetration of language systems occurred. The native speakers of the Kyiv -Polissya and Galicia -Podillya regions during the whole starting period of original features formation in the Ukrainian and Russian languages never interacted with the native speakers of Novgorod -Tver and Murom -Ryazan regions. Everything created (spoken and written) in the 11th-14th centuries in Murom, Ryazan, Rostov, Novgorod is the heritage of the Russian written language tradition, and in Kyiv, Halych, Volodymyr, Chernihiv -the Ukrainian written language tradition 3 .
Usus/norm establishment in the Ruthenian Ukrainian language of the earliest period on the basis of analyzing lingual phenomena that have penetrated from dialectal speech in course of rewriting 11 th century Church Slavonic texts, which had been preserved in the original, means extraction of language features from selected analysis sources (The Reims Gospel of the first half of the 11th century; Ostromyrov Gospel, 1056; Sviatoslav's Anthologies (Izborniks), 1073 and 1076; Archangel Gospel, 1092; as well as the original graffiti inscriptions on the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv) and the comparison of the former with modern Ukrainian (normative and dialectal) features, which may be the basis for highlighting the most ancient period of functioning of Ruthenian Ukrainian literary and written language well from the 11th century and on. This approach will enable tracing the rise (first fixations) and growth (quantitative manifestations) of the Ukrainian language norm.
We take into consideration the fact that those features that had been used in a certain area for several centuries could penetrate into the Church Slavonic texts. Therefore, even the earliest texts written in the Church Slavonic language are the study source of the linguistic norm for a particular East Slavic language in the outlined area of Kyiv Rus´. In this regard, we note that the texts chosen for the analysis, although, add to a certain extent to the common contribution to the culture of Ruthenians -Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians, but at the same time they reflect certain linguistic peculiarities that later remained in the language practice of a specific East Slavic people.
The objective thus will bring us closer to the main purpose of the study: to establish to what extent the analysed written sources are relevant for tracing the earliest history of the Ukrainian literary language The article will contain examples from the 11th century written records in order to demonstrate the emergence of the Ukrainian language norm, and consequently -the literary language.
We trace and register dialectal features in two stages. 1) finding phonetic (vocal, consonantal) and morphological (word-alternating), and, where possible, word-forming and lexical features, which were included in the text under the influence of local spoken language and contrasted with the corresponding features of possible ancient Bulgarian and Old Macedonian protographs; 2) Comparison of distinctive features with modern grammar and orthography Ukrainian literary norm (according to the СУЛМ -Сучасна українська літературна мова / Modern Ukrainian Literary Language) and dialectal features (according to the АУМ -Атлас української мови / Atlas of the Ukrainian language).
The chart below contains examples both well known in the literature and new ones that we have distinguished for the first time from the 11th century records. Conclusions. In accordance with the hypothesis, accepted in this study, the selected ancient Church Slavonic and Ruthenian records display more or less conversational features, which are preserved as normative in modern Ukrainian (or as a usus in Ukrainian dialects). We are well aware that some of the attested features may have been common for other Eastern Slavic languages, for example, the writing е instead of *ě (yat) is common in both Belarusian and Russian. But the localization of the manuscripts and the wider context of other identified features give reason to speak of a local (in this case, Kyiv) pronunciation usus. Additionally, the presence of exclusively Ukrainian features alongside with the common ones may serve the proof that these are the first examples of the Ukrainian norm. The number of such features rose from single manifestations in the most ancient texts of the 11th century, gradually increased to hundreds in the late 13th -early 14th centuries. Undoubtedly, in these cases it is possible to speak of a scribes' (who were the ancestors of modern Ukrainians) attempt to create a certain writing standard for their language.
The above mentioned examples make it possible to thuswise trace to a certain extent, the emergence of the Ukrainian language norm. Although there are very few original Ruthenian Ukrainian texts of the ancient written age, there is still reason to qualify attested features (repeated over several decades in the 11th century) as a reflection of the local Ruthenian vernacular element. Hence -the introduction of this dialectal usus element in writing and, accordingly, the establishment of the Ukrainian literary norm from the 11th century on took place.
Eventually, the suggested research can be an impetus for a broader study of the Ukrainian literary language emergence. Due to the new understanding and thorough linguistic analysis of Church Slavonic texts and the isolation of a considerable number of spoken Ruthenian (Ukrainian) features well in the records of the 11th century (Rheims Gospel, Svyatoslav's Anthologies, Archangel Gospel), which later become an unwritten usus / norm, the conclusions in the article may change the Slavists' approach to the process of creating Eastern Slavonic literary languages.
In the broadest context, the project effects and conclusions will be generic for studying the literary norm of Slavic languages, which developed on a Cyrillic graphic tradition. According to the thesis adopted in the project, the Church Slavonic language, which was not completely incomprehensible to the speakers, was not a fossilized system, but still fell within the influence of the vernacular Ruthenian elements. We assume that the introduction of local spoken features into the Church Slavonic language could be an impetus for the creation of certain Slavic literary languages. The texts studied, in which we find an obvious tendency: from the quantity (frequency) of a detected feature -to the establishment of the linguistic usus (norm), and hence -to the literary language, can serve a confirmation of the above mentioned assumption. The method for systematic study of spoken features in the written records, suggested in the project will open a new perspective on the rise of the literary Slavic languages on the Cyrillic basis.