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

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 This term – much better than the somewhat outdated term «literary language», suggesting a certain artistry of the author's utterance – is, however, still used in parallel with the generally accepted term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 Stanisław Urbańczyk 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. Key words: polish literary language, Ukrainian literary language, polish standard, Ukrainian standard, language norm, written record, East Slavic languages, Church Slavonic, Ruthenian language.