HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR 537The statement that in second conjugation verbs "the consonant r in Ukrainianalternates withx while in Russian ... in the first person singular and the third personplural r is retained" (p. 184), with the example 6irrn-6e)KaTb, is seriously misleading.This is the only example of ar-i alternation in a second conjugation verb inRussian; it is not an example chosen at random to illustrate a general comparativefeature of the East Slavic languages, although an uninformed reader could notdeduce this from PH.While the authors correctly note that OOTH does have plural forms, oflHiyiHi-oflHHyHeHHKH (p. 168) is not the same meaning of the numeral as in the singularexamples (onimfliM-oflHHflOM, etc.). An appropriate example of the plural formof this numeral with the meaning "one" would beoflHiHO»:Hu;i-o,iiHHHCDKHnm>i.In the discussion of adverbs, one wonders why the authors did not simply statethat there is no prefix 3- in Russian, instead of saying that "there are no adverbialformations with the prefix 3-" (p. 202), which is the bare truth, but leaves open thepossible interpretation that rules of adverbial derivation allow for the combination ofthis prefix with a stem in Ukrainian, but not in Russian. If the authors were to saythat such a prefix does not exist in Russian, there would be no need to mention allthe places where it fails to occur.The section of PH devoted to syntax describes simple and complex sentences andaddresses specific syntactic features (agreement, government, etc.). The syntacticclassifications (pp. 220ff.) often are not specifically comparative, in that they are notappropriate for describing different syntactic features of Ukrainian and Russian andhow these languages may differ from other languages. Nonetheless, it is useful tojuxtapose examples of different types of sentences in the two languages. This sectionhas mercifully few errors, although it is not altogether free of them: the authors'explanation of 3a flBa Micfliri-3a nBa Mec«iia as designating approximation is, ofcourse, incorrect.All in all, PH is a disappointment. It presents most of the facts of comparativeUkrainian and Russian grammar, and the large number of errors could be correctedin subsequent editions, although this view may be overly optimistic, considering thatthe edition reviewed here is a corrected edition. Even in such circumstances, however,the authors' unwillingness to distinguish linguistically relevant and irrelevantfeatures in an analysis makes this book a poor choice for teaching students howrelated languages can be compared. An ideal comparative grammar would includeanalyses of linguistic features that point out the place of such features in thelanguages as a whole and the interrelationships among them. One would hope thatfuture comparisons of Ukrainian and Russian will adopt a more insightful and betterintegrated approach.Harvard University