YURIY SHEVELOV: MODUS OF SCIENTIFIC SPACE AND TRADITIONS OF KHARKOV HISTORICAL-PHILOLOGICAL SCHOOL

The article analyzes the linguistic activity of Yuriy Shevelov, a professor at the Columbia University of the United States, an academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The genesis and evolution of the scholarly views of the researcher in the projection of the Kharkiv historical-philological school, its traditions, conceptual ideas, and the circle of philologists, which determined the formation of Ukrainian linguistics from the end of the nineteenth century, are considered. The attention was paid to the scientific status of the views of Y. Shevelov on the origin, development and functional perspective of the Ukrainian language. The linguistic competence of Yuriy Shevelov, which allows him to formulate assertions about the objectivity of assigning the monuments of verbal Ukrainian culture to the national historical heritage on the basis of linguistic characteristics, and not the territorial affiliation, is characterized. The linguist’s innovative ideas on the development of the phonological system of the Ukrainian language from the Proto-Slavic foundation to the present period, which were based on a broad historical, dialect and comparative material, are emphasized. Yuriy Shevelov opposed the well-known concepts of the East Slavic (Old Russian) protolanguage, advocating the concept of the configuration and rearrangement of dialectal groups, of which Ukrainian, Russian and Belarussian developed in the process of historical development. The article deals with the personalities of Kharkiv historical-philological school in connection with the cultural evolutionism of the Ukrainian literary tradition, primarily with the creative work of Gregory Skovoroda. The legitimacy of Yuriy Shevelov’s thesis about the Ukrainian phonetic nature of the language of the works of Gregory Skovoroda, which is confirmed in scientific works of modern researchers, is proved. Attention is paid to the high appreciation of Yu. Shevelov’s work in modern linguistics, which confirms the scientific bibliography of the main works that influenced the modern «state and status» of Ukrainian linguistics.