Yurii Kovbasko

Scopus Publications

[Is BEFORE a preposition, an adverb, or a conjunction? Searching for an answer in diachrony]
Yurii Kovbasko
Ostrava Journal of English Philology, 2025
The paper traces the development of the preposition, the adverb, and the conjunction BEFORE. It proves that BEFORE was formed as a preposition in early Old English. Its frequency subsequently decreased before resuming its development in the late 19th century. The adverb BEFORE was transposed from the preposition and institutionalized in Old English; it experienced constant growth up to late Middle English, when the category suffered decay. The conjunction BEFORE was transposed from the preposition in early Middle English and was characterized by prolonged institutionalization, which ended in early Modern English when the category started evolving.
The Role of the Comité Ucraíno de Auxílio às Vítimas da Guerra in the Life of Ukrainian Immigrants in Brazil (Based on the Official Correspondence in 1946–1948)
Yurii Kovbasko
Slavia, 2025
The paper analyses the role of the Ukrainian Committee for Aid to Victims of the War in the life of Ukrainian immigrants in Brazil in the post-war period. The empirical material comprises official correspondence (1946–1948) between the Committee and Ukrainian immigrants in Brazil, which justifies the scientific novelty of the study, as these letters have been transcribed from handwriting into text and analysed for the first time. The research methodology is primarily based on content analysis of the letters and is supported by the methods of text typology and classification. The Committee was the only officially functioning Ukrainian-speaking organization in Brazil, initially established to support displaced Ukrainians in Europe; nevertheless, it also provided support to Ukrainians who immigrated to Brazil. The main issues that troubled Ukrainian immigrants in Brazil, prompting them to seek the Committee’s assistance, included: gruelling working conditions; undue payment and unjust wages; harsh living conditions in remote areas; lack of Ukrainian newspapers, magazines, and books; a desire to relocate closer to other Ukrainians; requests for information about life and working conditions in other areas or the whereabouts of relatives or friends who lived in Latin America.
A diachronic approach to the functional transposition of ALONG and ALONGSIDE in the English language
Yurii Kovbasko
Ostrava Journal of English Philology, 2024
The paper investigates the evolution of the prepositions and adverbs ALONG and ALONGSIDE as subjects to the process of functional transposition. The research investigates the formation of ALONG as an adverb during the Middle English period and its functional transposition into the category of the preposition in late Middle English. The correlation between the initial and transposed categories has stabilized, and they are more or less equally represented in Present-Day English. ALONGSIDE appeared as an adverb at the end of Early Modern English; in Late Modern English, it was transposed into a preposition, which is almost suppressing the initial category of an adverb in Present-Day English.
FUNCTIONAL TRANSPOSITION OF ‘SINCE’ IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Yurii KOVBASKO
Analele Universitatii Din Craiova Seria Stiinte Filologice Lingvistica, 2024
The paper is aimed at tracing the evolution of the preposition, adverb, and conjunction SINCE as the initial and transposed categories. The research proves that the adverb SINCE was formed due to grammaticalization of the construction SIÐ ÐAN/SIÞ ÞAN in 850-950 and has undergone functional transposition into the conjunction and the preposition. The adverb SINCE has been constantly decreasing and reached the lowest point in the early Present-day English. The functional transposition of the adverb SINCE into the conjunction in 850-950 was characterized by its immediate institutionalization and its statistics have been growing steadily with an upsurge in 1350-1420 and a constantly fluctuating growth after that. The transposed category of the preposition was formed in 1250-1350 and was institutionalized in the next stage of Middle English and since then, its usage frequency has been fluctuating from 18.2% to 24.1%, depending on the period.
FUNCTIONAL TRANSPOSITION OF 'AROUND' AND 'ROUND' IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Yurii Kovbasko, and
British and American Studies, 2023
Functional Transposition of about in the 9th-21stCenturies
Yurii Kovbasko
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Philologica, 2022
The paper exemplifies a unique attempt to trace the evolution of the preposition and the adverb ABOUT as initial and transposed categories. The study focuses on the development of both interwoven categories since 850 and up to the early 21st century and covers 16 time spans. The paper proves that despite being registered during 850–950 as the representative of both categories, ABOUT initially represented the category of preposition. The research showcases that since its functional transposition in Old English, the category of the adverb ABOUT has been undergoing a continuous decrease, which is significantly enhanced in the second half of Late Modern English and reaches its peak in the early 21st century. The reasons for the growth of the preposition ABOUT lie not in the phenomenon of transposition but in the emergence of a new function: ‘in reference to’, which developed in Early Modern English and provided the impetus for a further increase of the preposition ABOUT.
Functional transposition of TILL and until from a diachronic perspective
Yurii Kovbasko
Exell, 2022
The research traces the development of functional transposition of TILL and UNTIL in English. The study covers 16 historical periods and is based on 1,243 examples extracted from the writings from 850 to 1710, which are analyzed without resorting to any corpus software; 2,225 examples from 1710 to 1920, which are automatically tagged utilizing the corpus toolbox Lancsbox; and the statistical data on 127,544 examples over the period of 1920–2020. It is hypothesized that despite being synonyms and representatives of the same grammatical categories of prepositions and conjunctions in modern English, the lexical units TILL and UNTIL were initially formed as prepositions and later, following their own transpositional patterns, they were transposed into conjunctions.
Procedure of functional transposition analysis in the English language
Yurii Kovbasko
Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 2022
The paper presents an attempt to develop a procedure of researching functional transposition in English. Functional transposition is interpreted as a diachronicsynchronic functional process and its outcome, which presupposes the ability of lexical units, by means of grammaticalization and lexicalization and without application of any morphological and/or syntactical markers, to acquire and realize functions inherent to other word classes. The procedure consists of four major stages which cover the entire process of transposition of each lexical unit from its origin and up to the current use. The main methods include: definition and componential analyses, historical analysis of origin, diachronic corpus analysis, and synchronic corpus analysis. In the present paper, the procedure is verified with a case study of the lexical unit ‘IN’. It has been established that in the case of ‘IN’, functional transposition started from the category of prepositions. The tendency of its development shows that after a gradual decrease and stabilization, observed in Early and Late Modern English, respectively, functional transposition of ‘IN’ has undergone a dramatic increase in Present-Day English. It is explained by formation of new sociocultural situations and institutionalization of numerous patterns of functionally transposed ‘IN’ in the language.
Functional Transposition of 'ON' from a Diachronic Perspective
Studies about Languages, 2022
Socio-Psycholinguistic Features of ‘till’/‘until’ Functioning in Present-Day English (Corpus-Based and Corpus-Driven Research)
Yurii Kovbasko, Lesya Ikalyuk
Psycholinguistics, 2021
Мета дослідження. Стаття спрямована на висвітлення ролі соціопсихолінгвістичних факторів функціонування лексичних одиниць ‘till’/‘until’ в сучасній англійській мові. У фокусі дослідження знаходяться лексичні одиниці ‘till’/‘until’, що є об’єктами функціональної транспозиції, у результаті якої обидві одиниці визначаються та функціонують як прийменники і сполучники, описуються ідентичними словниковими дефініціями, походять від однієї частини мови – прийменника і зазнають функціональної транспозиції виключно в категорію сполучника. Водночас вони характеризуються різним ступенем інституціоналізації в мові, що підтверджується статистичними даними. Відповідно висувається гіпотеза, що розбіжності у використанні цих одиниць залежать від соціопсихолінгвістичних факторів, що характеризують мовлення на сучасному етапі розвитку мови, а також визначають рівень інституціоналізації будь-якого транспозиційного процесу. Методи та методика дослідження. Аналіз проведено шляхом використання корпусно-базованого та корпусно-обумовленого підходів на основі даних, отриманих з Британського Національного Корпусу (BNC) як найбільш збалансованого та репрезентативного джерела зразків письмового та усного мовлення. У процесі дослідження, соціопсихолінгвістичні фактори поділені на лінгвістичні, що охоплюють: типи дискурсу, типи тексту, похідні типи тексту, сфери використання тексту, сфери використання тексту, що обумовлюються контекстом, типи взаємодії та рівні складності тексту; а також соціопсихологічні, а саме: вік і стать автора (для письмового дискурсу), вік, стать і соціальний клас мовців та респондентів (для усного дискурсу).  Результати та висновки. Отримані дані свідчать про те, що між прийменником та сполучником ‘till’ практично відсутні будь-які розбіжності, за винятком вікових категорій авторів та мовців, що підтверджує спільну семантику одиниць. Показники цих категорій вказують на можливість подальшого ширшого розвитку саме прийменника ‘till’. Між прийменником та сполучником ‘until’ спостерігаються суттєвіші розбіжності, зокрема, з точки зору лінгвістичних факторів. З огляду на те, що саме соціопсихологічні фактори визначають лінгвістичні особливості використання одиниць, відзначаємо, що прийменник ‘until’ має найменшу кількість точок дотику з іншими одиницями дослідження, що обумовлює перспективу його детального аналізу з точки зору сучасної психолінгвістики.
Grammatical approaches to prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, and particles in late modern English
Yurii Kovbasko
Studies about Languages, 2021
On the problem of parts of speech identification in the english language: A historical overview
Yurii Kovbasko
Studies about Languages, 2020

Yurii Kovbasko

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Scopus Publications