COMPARISONS IN THE SHORT STORIES OF VASYL STEFANYK

Abstract

The article analyzes the comparison in Vasyl Stefanyk’s short stories in terms of their formal structure, identifi cation of the typology of subjects and objects of artistic meanings, their emotional and expressive potential. It is established that the analyzed comparative compounds are inhomogeneous in their formal and grammatical structure. The vast majority of them are comparisons with a comparative conjunction “yak” (as). Other structural varieties of comparisons range from a few units to two dozen. These are comparative constructions with conjunctions “yak koly by”, “yakby”, “mov”, “movby”, “nache b” (as if), as well as with opposite conjunctions “a”, “ale” (but) and with a missing conjunction. There are also comparative compounds in which the comparison is expressed lexically – with the help of words with the semantics of similarity, adverbs with confi xes “po- … -omu(y)”, nouns in the form of the instrumental case or descriptive construction. Analysis of comparisons by semantic and thematic features of their subjects showed that almost half of them are the names of characters. From the names of impersonals, the most common in the function of the subject of comparison are the names of body parts, abstract entities, buildings, their parts, liquids, animals, plants, realities of the celestial sphere, places, food, tools, weapons, and other semantically distinct words. The function of the object of comparison is most often performed by the names of persons, animals, birds, insects, fi sh, plants, fl owers, household items, tools, natural phenomena, food, liquids, water bodies, buildings, structures, clothing, hats, ornaments, objects of the celestial sphere, metals, abstract entities, somatic and locative names, a number of thematically separated words of subject semantics. Artistic expressiveness, emotional and expressive load, stylistic signifi cance of comparisons in Vasyl Stefanyk’s short stories are not the same. The novelist drew a notable layer of comparative compounds from the achievements of vernacular comparisons of a national or regional nature, which are characterized by a relatively stable, established relationship between subject and object and recurrence, which to some extent reduces their literary and aesthetic value. Against their background, comparative compounds with non-trivial, extraordinary comparison of subject and object have a greater emotional and expressive infl uence on the reader. The greatest effi ciency in the expression of speech expression was evidenced by comparisons with a detailed, widespread object, which details, concretizes, artistically expresses the subject. In many cases, such an object grows into a separate image.