HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

Critique of a Ukrainian-Russian Comparative Grammar*DAVID J. BIRNBAUMPORIVNJAL'NA HRAMATYKA UKRAJINS'KOJI IROSIJS'KOJI MOV. By M. Ja. Brycyn, M. A. Zovtobrjux, and A. V.Majboroda. 2nd ed., revised and expanded. Kiev: Vysca skola,1978. 270 pp. 60 k.Porivnjal 'na hramatyka ukrajins 'koji i rosijs 'koji mov (hereafter PH) is designed toserve as part of a course for students at pedagogical institutes and university philologydepartments (p. 2) who are preparing to teach Ukrainian and Russian in schoolsin the Ukrainian SSR (pp. 8-9). The authors quite reasonably suggest that thesefuture teachers will be better equipped to explain the facts of Ukrainian and Russianto their students if they have undertaken a comparative study of the two languages.(PH also contains considerable information about Belorussian, the third member ofthe East Slavic family. While Belorussian does not figure in all sections of the book,it plays a large enough role that PH could easily be expanded into a comparativestudy of all three East Slavic languages.)The volume is divided into six principal sections: "Introduction" (pp. 7-26),"Lexicon and Phraseology" (pp. 26-48), "Alphabet and Orthography" (pp.48-53), "Phonetics" (pp. 53-97), "Morphology" (pp. 97-214), and "Syntax"(pp. 214-65). There is a ninety-four item bibliography at the end of the book,which includes a dozen "methodological" entries (i.e., by Marx, Lenin, etc.). M.Ja. Brycyn is the author of the introduction, the portions of the phonetics sectiondevoted to consonants and stress, and the portions of the morphology sectiondevoted to adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, particles, and interjections. M. A.Zovtobrjux is responsible for the section on syntax, and A. V. Majboroda is responsiblefor the remainder of the book (the sections on alphabet and orthography, theportion of the phonetics section devoted to the vowel system, and most of the morphologysection).PH falls far short of its goals. Its shortcomings can be divided into threecategories. First, there are too many errors: incorrect phonetic descriptions andderivations, inaccurate explanations of the meanings of syntactic constructions, notto mention typographical errors. Second, and more serious in that they are harderfor an inexperienced reader to detect, are errors of interpretation (note the discussion* I am grateful to Horace G. Lunt, Olga Yokoyama, Roman Koropeckyj, and Tom Garza fortheir comments on an earlier version of this review. They, of course, are not responsible forany errors.