FEATURES OF THE DECLINATION OF PROTO-SLAVIC CONSONANT STEMS OF THE MASCULINE GENDER IN CARPATHO-UKRAINIAN DIALECTS

This article examines the declension characteristics of Proto-Slavic masculine consonant stems in the Ukrainian dialects of Transcarpathia and, to some extent, Precarpathia. The article draws on materials collected as part of the accentological program during the Carpathian Expedition of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1987–2005), supplemented with forms from published dialectological sources. This program systematically recorded the nominative-accusative, genitive singular, and nominative-accusative plural forms. Other case forms were not systematically recorded. This article examines the original consonantal stems from which we have collected sufficient material for a comparative historical analysis of Carpatho-Ukrainian dialects. Carpatho-Ukrainian (primarily Transcarpathian) dialects retain rudiments of the autonomous declension of consonant stems of the masculine gender (also neuter and feminine genders, which are not considered here). In contrast to Old Church Slavonic, the Old Russian version of Church Slavonic, and the “supra-dialectal” Old Russian language, in the Old Galician area the penetration of i-declension forms, judging by our data, was minimal (in contrast to the Old Novgorod dialect, in which the endings of i-stems were used in the maximum number of positions). In the Carpatho-Ukrainian dialects, the consonantal stems do not have the endings G Sg *-i (Old Russian -и), N Pl *-ьje (Old Russian -ие) and G Pl *-ьjь (Old Russian -ии), borrowed from the i-declension, which are characteristic of both Old Church Slavonic and the “supra-dialectal” Old Russian.