Kovalenko B. Linguistic and cultural area of Podillia in the history of Ukrainian literary language of the late XIX – early XX centuries.

The completed dissertation is an innovative research, which combines two approaches to the study of language creativity of writers: in terms of Ukrainian literary language history and a complex areological studying of the language of their works. In the work the state of researching the language of Podillia in the late XIX – early XX centuries has been defined, the role of a separate linguistic and cultural region (area) in the development of a national literary standard has been determined for the first time in Ukrainian linguistics. Systematic investigation of the linguistic and cultural area of Podillia, which involved the collecting and studying of ethnographic and folklore materials, began in the first decades of the XIX century and it was carried out by representatives of domestic and Polish science. Till the middle of the XIX century such studies were mainly historical and geographical in nature, ethnographic descriptions in the publications of this period occupied a relatively small place. From the second half of the XIX century the next stage in the ethnographic studying of Podillia begins, which resulted in accumulation of a significant amount of factual material, mainly on the spiritual culture of Podillia - customs and rituals of family and calendar cycles, folk demonology, fairy tales, songs, riddles, proverbs and sayings that reflect Podillian dialect features.