Regional variation and the development of written / standard Ukrainian
An important characteristic of Ukrainian is its substantial dialectal and regional variation. This has also had a strong impact on the evolution of written / standard Ukrainian. Two writing traditions are of particular importance, those of the western Ukraine and those of south-eastern and central Ukraine. Language contact contributed further, typically superstrate elements to the existing regional variation. The emergence of a unified, albeit to some extent still pluricentric standard language is one of the key features in the history of modern Ukrainian. The panel features three case studies at different junctures in time since the late 19th century to the present day. They show the complex linguistic and extra-linguistic, historical factors involved in the selection and deselection of phonetic-phonological, lexical and other variant forms for standard Ukrainian. How to analyse these factors and their interaction raises questions that are also relevant for the history of many other Slavonic written / standard languages.
