Yiddish-Slavic language parallels (on the material of prefixed verbs in Der Nister’s “Shiker” and its Ukrainian translation)

Abstract

The article analyzes derivational and semantic parallels in Yiddish and Ukrainian from the standpoint of the author’s linguistic hybridity theory. It presents the results of a comparative study of prefixed verbs used in the story “Shiker” by the Soviet Yiddish writer Der Nister and its Ukrainian translation “Spyanilo” (by E. Raitsin). Linguistic parallels are shown as Slavic phenomena in the Yiddish prefixed verb derivation and semantics, resulting from the Slavic adstrate influence on Middle High German – the basis language of Yiddish. The German expression plane of the studied Yiddish prefixes and their genetically Slavic or both German and Slavic content plane are discussed in terms of comparative history. The comparative studies shows that more than half of the verbs in the Yiddish source text contain semantically Slavic homonymous prefixes and German-Slavic hybrid polysemous prefixes. In terms of translatology, it is shown that the absolute majority of these verbs are translatable into Ukrainian by simple morphemic and alternative morphemic substitution. In the general theoretical aspect, the terms and concepts “homonymous prefixes” and “hybrid polysemous prefix” are specified. It has been proved that the Yiddish-Slavic parallels between Yiddish source and Ukrainian target language / between Yiddish original and its Ukrainian translation are an additional evidence of the German-Slavic hybridity of Yiddish as a genealogically Germanic language.