Hayda O. The grammar and semantics of prepositions in the Ukrainian language of the XVI-XVII centuries (based on the documents of the Lviv Stauropegion Brotherhood).

The thesis is the first comprehensive study of prepositions in the Ukrainian language of the XVI-XVII centuries.The work summarizes different views on the status of the preposition as a part of speech, presents the history of formation of the concept preposition from the first Ukrainian grammars to the modern linguistic works. The research is based on the corpus of the XVI-XVII c. Ukrainian prepositions found in the documents of the Lviv Stauropegion brotherhood. The prepositions were analyzed in their origin, structure, and semantic components. The work presents the specifics of functioning of certain non-derivative and derivative prepositions, describes and conceptualizes their paradigmatic relationships within these groups. It also offers a comparative analysis how the prepositions functioned in the Ukrainian language of the XVI-XVII century compared to other Slavic languages of the same period and to modern Ukrainian literary language, including its dialects. The author argues that the Ukrainian prepositions of that period had a well-developed and complete structure. Having the ancient Slavic origins, most of them actively function in the contemporary Ukrainian language.The non-derivative prepositions have extensive connective links with the main parts of speech. Most of these prepositions can be joined with two or three case forms unlike the derivative prepositions that are combined mainly with only one case form of the noun. Usually, this is a genitive case. The derivative prepositions have a narrow semantic structure expressing two or three semantic-grammatical relationships.