Alpha is not Omega - Structural Superiority of Ukrainian over Russian

By Rostyslav Bilous

It is common knowledge that all human languages, being unique, also share certain similarities. These similarities are due to the existence of universal principles that are part of a special “program inbuilt in the human brain”. Linguistic parameters, on the other hand, are responsible for the structural differences that render every language into a unique code. Combinations of principles and parameters vary from one language to another. The number of those combinations is limited and this helps us group languages (albeit roughly) typologically. Languages also undergo changes – they evolve. Interestingly, there has never been one single language that changed to become a “twin” of any other linguistic code. Rather, even most related languages are bound to undergo changes that make them less and less related. Some “linguists” fail however to apprehend this simple and logical truth.

In the catalogue Project line 15. Linguistics & Anthropology (2005, p.30), in the short description of the article by A. Danylenko and S. Vakulenko on Ukrainian, we read: “Ukrainian is a solid inflectional language, although it has not reached the degree of synthetic optimization characteristic of some other Slavonic languages (Russian, Belorussian, Polish).” The first impression that a reader gets after reading this statement is: “Wow, so Ukrainian is not developed enough, it still has a way to go, or to grow to reach the state Russian, etc. is at”. The logical question would be: “But does Ukrainian really have to participate in this race and keep trying to be a “twin” of Russian, or Polish, etc.?” Further on, we also read: “The so-called synthetic Future tense, Pluperfect tense, the Vocative case and other recessive properties of Ukrainian are being treated as a sequel to the slackening of its synthetic evolution”. To understand these two quotations, let us turn to, say, the Oxford American College Dictionary. We need to check the meaning of the central term here – “synthetic”. There, it is explained as: “(of a language) characterized by the use of inflections rather than word order to express grammatical structure. Contrasted with analytic”. Now, let us check the explanation of “analytic”. It is as follows: “(of a language) tending not to alter the form of its words and to use word order rather than inflection to express grammatical structure”. It is important to add, that inflections are suffixes and/or endings added to the word base to express a grammatical function. Now, we all know that every coin has two faces. If we change perspectives and look this time at Russian through the prism of the Ukrainian grammar, it (Russian) too might appear to be structurally undeveloped.

To make a long story short, the first quoted statement is making us believe in the myth (very popular in the Russophile linguistic circles of East Ukraine and Russia) of the structural poverty of Ukrainian vis-à-vis Russian, whereas the second statement denies what the above-mentioned dictionary says about synthetic languages. Is it because Russian does not have such structures like the synthetic (or inflectional) Future tense (synthetic: ja robytymu vs. analytic or periphrastic, being the only possibility in Russian: Ja budu robyty = Ja budu dielat’), Pluperfect tense (analytic: Ja buv xodyv/čytav), the Vocative or the 7^th case (synthetic: Petre! Marijko!) How can the evolution of Ukrainian be slackening? Ukrainian has structures Russian does not have at all levels of its grammar: phonological (g-h variation, mobile word accent, e.g. sviáta – sviatá etc.); syntactic (the above Pluperfect tense, first person plural imperatives, e.g. Davaj pidemo! = xodimo etc.); morphological and lexical. Curiously, synthetic or one word forms often coexist in Ukrainian with analytic (two word) forms – testifying to the superiority of Ukrainian in terms of its richness and flexibility: a phenomenon very rare in other related languages, not because they lost them, but because they have never developed them to the degree of analytico-synthetic optimization of Ukrainian!

In the face of borrowing foreign words, Ukrainian displays a tendency to developing its own equivalents to loan-words. Obviously, we are not talking about the Russophile imposition of different artificial norms on Ukrainian. Russian seems to react differently, more prone to quick absorption of foreign forms. The three-century long history of Russian shows us that its internal means of developing equivalents have been slackening.

 Well, I almost forgot (just to add zest to this commentary): to the great disappointment of some Ukraino-phobic Russian-speaking “profffessors” specializing in Ukrainian Studies or related fields and insisting in their “scientific” anecdotes that Ukrainian has barely 50,000 words compared to Russian’s 150,000,  I discovered that Busel’s Dictionary of Modern Ukrainian (2005) contains, strange to say, 250,000 words and expressions and reportedly is to be seriously enlarged for its next edition so that at least a major part of all those words that still remain unregistered may be included.