The article discusses the image of Volhynian Polesye as presented in Alexander Kuprin’s novella Olesya. Kuprin’s piece combines numerous elements characteristic of a Russian Volhynia text. As regards nature, this is primarily represented by the theme of wildlife. The motif of an untouched, virginal wilderness along with solitude also appears. As for the presentation of customs and morals, the themes of secluded rural life as well as the ignorance and backwardness of the local population are conspicuous. It is here that the binary oppositions typical of a Volhynia text are expressively conveyed: these include ours vs. the others, and the human vs. the devilish. In this work, mythology also features prominently. The image of Polesie shown in this text is to a large extent that of a mythical expanse where primeval forces lurk, one emanating an ambience of mystery. It is this ambience that inspires the narrator to ponder the relationship between man and nature, and to encourage existential reflection. In conclusion, it should be said that Kuprin’s novella made a significant contribution to the formation of the Russian Volhynia text at the turn of the 20th century.

The subject of the article are personal names of the Ukrainian population living in the former Chełm land, presented within the context of historical and cultural and religious conditions, as determinants of national identity. Language, in addition to tradition, a sense of religious, historical and territorial community and national consciousness, being one of its basic elements. Shown is the relationship between certain types of anthroponyms and their linguistic structure together with their ethnic and social origin and, to some extent, the system of values professed. Attention has also been paid to the phenomenon of the infiltration of Polish features present in the anthroponymy of the inhabitants of the area in question.

The Borshchiv district, along with the western part of Podolia, was joined to Poland in the 14th century, to which it was to belong, intermittently, until the end of World War II. The purpose of the article is a semantic and structural analysis of the place names in this area, on the basis of which a linguistic picture emerges of the Borszczów district. The most numerous group of physiographic names describes its natural properties – the richness of its rivers and lakes, the animals living there, forested places, numerous undulations and plateaus. Also, ethnic names indirectly refer to the nature of the land itself whereas cultural names – equally numerous – describe the district as a result of the properties acquired due to human activity. The most recent layer being the ideological names created during communism. Older cultural names inform of settlement forms, defensive places, their state after numerous invasions, places related to spiritual, secular culture and the economy. Renewed and diminutive names depend on new settlements being built in the district. Among the names of places derived from personal names, the most numerous are possessive names, which are based on eastern or neutral names, just like with patronymics. The meaning of the name Szuparka remains unclear.

The article analyzes the phonetic system of the Bulaeshty dialect of the Ukrainian language as used in the village of Bulaeshty in the Republic of Moldova. This had been established until the 15th century by the natives of Bukovyna in the Ukraine. A system of contemporary sound derivatives from a Proto-Slavic ancient phonetic system of consonants has been identified. The full or partial conservation of archaic phonetic forms has become fixed. The Bulaeshty dialect retains a number of relict forms, including phonetic archaisms which have long been lost in the Ukrainian literary language and are increasingly fixed in modern Ukrainian dialects. An record of consonant phonemes in the dialect has been compiled. There are 38 phonemes and according to the differential basis of the “place of creation” of the sound manifestations, traditionally they are classified into groups: 1) labials (/б/, /п/, /в/, /м/, /ф/); 2) front tongue (/д/, /д’/, /т/, /т’/, /з/, /з’/, /с/, /с’/, /ц/, /ц’/, /л/, /л’/, /н/, /н’/, /дз/, /дз’/, /р/, /р’/, /дж’/, /ɕ/, /ч/, /ч’/, /ж/, /ш/); 3) medium tongue (/й/); 4) back tongue /(ґ/, /ґ’/, /к/, /к’/, /х/, /х’/); 5) pharyngeal (/г/, /г’/). Тheir functional load and conditions of positional and combinatorial variation have been determined.

The article presents vocabulary, both indigenous Polish and borrowed, connected with human characteristics arising from man’s appearance, character and behaviour as used in the petty nobility village of Dorohań and the peasant village of Wójtowce in Ukraine on the east bank of the Zbruch river. 204 words were analyzed divided into three main thematic categories and smaller groups, i.e. behavioural traits, moral deeds, status characteristics, mental abilities; appearance traits, character features and physical and emotional state words. The analysis showed that the foreign – Ukrainian and Russian – influence on the Polish vocabulary of the peasant village of Wójtowce is stronger than on the vocabulary of the petty nobility village of Dorohań. At the same time, the residents of Wójtowce use indigenous and borrowed words that are more expressive, both positively and negatively, what can be explained by the more frequent use of Polish in their everyday life. Comparison with other Polish dialects in Ukraine has revealed a certain similarity but also diversity, what can serve as the basis for further linguistic as well as cultural, ethnographic or anthropological research.

The article is based on an old prints language analysis of Medicines for dormant male intent by Demyan Nalyvayko (Ostrih, 1607), Mirrors of Theology by Kyrylo Stavrovetsky (Pochaiv, 1618), Eucharist by Sofroniy Pochasky (Kyiv, 1637). Shown is how important the colloquial Polish component was for an old-Ukrainian scribe, whose aim was to write his works “in an understandable manner”. It is focused on the fact that, despite the significant percentage of spoken Ukrainian elements in the texts of educated Ruthenians of the day, efforts s to create a colloquial text were linguistically made not only by employing the locally spoken Ukrainian. Numerous glosses, lexical doublets, syntactic constructions indicate the noticeable presence of Polish as a language in order to present the material to the reader in an understandable form. In the works of D. Nalyvayko, K. Stavrovetsky, S. Pochasky and many others, educated Ruthenians tended to write in a vernacular language embodied by the formula: local spoken Ukrainian plus Polish. There are many examples of the inclusion of structural elements from one language within the other, as shown by the analyzed material.

To study language contact in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, we employ extensive subdialect records from atlases, dictionaries, monographic studies, and various file collections. Significantly, however, all of the above lack historical information about the words they contain. Such data can be obtained by using local names and by taking into account all pan-Slavic references. Such comparisons justify the conclusion that historically many of the presented names extended far further westward than is indicated by typically used materials, mainly from the 20th century, though much less frequently from the second half of the 19th century. This sheds new light on the problem of whether the names in question are loan words, naturally older than had previously been thought, or rather relics of former regional convergence, covering the broad Polish-Russian language borderland, and constituting the Mazovian-Russian community.

This article presents the results of research into Podlasie surnames motivated by common nouns (appellatives). Appellatives reconstructed on the basis of surnames used in this region are very often associated genetically with East Slavonic subdialects (mainly Belarusian and Ukrainian), which differ from Polish at the phonetic level, including full-voiced articulation, the lack of nasal vowel production, softening in combinations such as *tj, *dj and other features. The presence of subdialect vocabulary of East Slavonic origin shows the influence of the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages, and their regional varieties on the process of surname formation in Podlasie, reaching the area under discussion together with successive waves of incomers of Russian origin.

The author of the article focuses her attention on the Polish-language part of the Suprasl Lexicon published in 1722 by the Basilian convent publishing house in Suprasl. In terms of origin the regional vocabulary constitutes two groups. One group, with its parallels in Old Church Slavonic (OCS), exhibits a common Slavonic occurrence. In formal terms, the words register West Slavonic features such as the Polish suffix -ro- in skowroda (OCS сковрада, Ruthenian сковoрoда) or -ło- in tłokno (OCS тлакно, Ruthenian толокно). The provenance of the other group of regional vocabulary is more limited in rangeand we should search for references in the West Ruthenian languages developing within the Polish language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (e.g., brozna, bystrzynia, czerha, muraszczka, muraszcznik, niedonosek, powodyr, przekidczyk, radno). The majority of the analyzed words have been found in 19th-century sources (e.g., dialect dictionaries, Adam Mickiewicz’s literary texts). However, the analysis proves that their chronology begins as early as in the 17th-18th centuries.