Anton Luckevich’s BelarusianGrammar and the Linguistic Usage in the Period of „Nasha Niwa” (Variability of Flexional Morphemes in the First Declension of Belarusian Nouns)

Abstract

Anton Luckevich’s handwritten Belarusian grammar (Vilnius 1916), one of the first attempts to codify the new Belarusian literary language from the beginning of the 20th century, was a brief and incomplete description of language usage in the so-called period of „Nasha Niwa.” The author of the article has analysed the distinctive variety and competition of case morphemes in the first declension of Belarusian nouns, in order to discover, if Luckevich has solved the mentioned difficult problem. His norms of flexional morphemes were in accordance with linguistic usage only if, in the publishing, there already existed a certain acknowledged tradition of case norms supported by a corresponding uniform state of things in geographical dialects. However, if different suffixal morphemes and their varieties were competitors, the norms of case endings proposed by Luckevich do not agree with the linguistic realities on account of either unsuccessful assessment of language usage or inadequate knowledge of differentiation in the Belarusian dialectal area, as well as an undervaluation of intra-Belarusian analogical processes and/or assimilation tendencies in the case system caused by foreign languages. The application of certain inadequate methodical criteria during the analysis of case endings led sometimes to an inaccurate evaluation of linguistic phenomena.