The evolution of the grammatical category of verb tense in early 20th-century Ukrainian grammar books
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28925/2311-259x.2025.4.6Keywords:
verbal tense, grammatical category, past perfect, Ukrainian grammar books of the early 20th century, terminology, history of linguistics, analytical tense forms, grammar, language education discourse, Ukrainian languageAbstract
The article aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the development of the system of grammatical tense forms. This analysis is based on Ukrainian grammar books of the early twentieth century — a period marked by the active consolidation of the national linguistic tradition and the formation of a coherent terminological system. The relevance of the study stems from the need to systematically conceptualize the theoretical foundations for describing Ukrainian verbal tense forms, particularly the debated status of the past perfect, whose interpretation in grammar books of that period is variable and fragmentary. The article examines a set of grammar descriptions from eastern and western Ukraine within the broader context of language-norm codification, which enables the determination of how the tense system was modelled and the terminological approaches employed.
The study focuses on the grammatical status of the past perfect and the specific features of its interpretation in early twentieth-century Ukrainian grammar books. The study’s methodology is based on the descriptive method, which ensures the systematization and generalization of the grammatical characteristics presented in the sources. The analysis also employs comparative and terminological procedures, as well as selected structural-semantic approaches.
The main findings of the research involve identifying key trends in the development of grammatical thought: the gradual establishment of a four-component tense system; outlining different models for forming the past perfect; determining the boundaries of its use; the variability of word order within analytical constructions; and the expansion and unification of the terminological system. The scholarly novelty of the study lies in the comprehensive comparison of grammatical descriptions of various types, which made it possible to determine the tendencies in the formation of a four-component tense system including the past perfect, to establish terminological variation in designating the past perfect, to explain the factors that facilitated this variability, and to characterize the evolution of grammatical descriptions of the period.
Prospects for further research include expanding the historical description of the tense category by incorporating grammatical sources from the late nineteenth century and the interwar period, as well as studying the evolution of the past perfect in texts representing different styles and genres.
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