Forms of address in contemporary Ukrainian newspapers: Morphology, gender and pragmatics

This dissertation examines variation in nominal (unbound) address forms and related constructions in contemporary (post-Soviet) Ukrainian. The data come from 134 randomly selected articles in two Ukrainian newspapers dating from 1998--2013.;Among the morphological and syntactic issues that receive particular attention are the allomorphy of the Ukrainian vocative and the spread of vocative markings to new categories (e.g., last names). In addition, the dissertation examines how the vocative behaves in apposition with other noun phrases; this sheds light on the controversial question of the status of the vocative in the Ukrainian case system. Another syntactic issue discussed in the study is the collocability of the unbound address and deferential reference term pan, which has become widespread in the post-Soviet period.;The dissertation also examines several pragmatic issues relevant for the variation in contemporary Ukrainian address. First, it investigates how familiarity and distance affect the choice of different unbound address forms. Second, it examines how the gender of the speech act participants (addresser and addressee) influence preferencs for particular forms of address. Up to now, there have been scarcely any investigations of Ukrainian from the viewpoint of either pragmatics or gender linguistics. Thus the dissertation lays the foundation for future investigation of these important issues.