This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Oksana Lebedivna is a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine (expected 2022), and a Fulbright Researcher at Pace University, New York (March 15–December 15, 2021). Liudmyla Dyka (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) and Andrii Danylenko (Pace University) are her Ph.D. advisors. Her doctoral research focuses on the development of the major Late Common Slavic phonological tendency in the Hutsul dialect of the Ukrainian language. She also teaches a course on Ukrainian as a Foreign Language at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

What research are you working on?

I am a historian of language and dialects, in particular Ukrainian, and my research, including my Fulbright project, centers on sound changes since Common Slavic and how they are reflected in one of the Slavic dialects which demonstrates archaic language features, e.g., the Kryvorivnia dialect of Hutsul of Southwest Ukrainian. Old people living in the village of Kryvorivnia tell family stories about researchers, Ukrainian writers, and foreign photographers who visited the village in the early 20th century (see for example Kryvorivnia v zhytti i tvorchosti ukraïnsʹkykh pysʹmennykiv, diiachiv nauky i kulʹtury). Kryvorivnia was one of the filming locations for the legendary Ukrainian 20th century motion picture Tini zabutykh predkiv [Shadows of the Forgotten Ancestors] (1964) by Serhii Paradzhanov (1924-1990). Hutsuls, including several Kryvorivnians, portrayed themselves in the movie based on a novel under the same title by Mykhailo Kotsiubyns'kyi (1864-1913).

For my Fulbright project, I treat internal factors of historical Common Slavic palatalizations (softening resulting in new sets of consonants). I examine the mechanism of palatalization in the Kryvorivnia dialect of Ukrainian with respect to a tendency toward so-called intrasyllabic harmony recognized as crucial for a phonological system of Late Common Slavic and changes of *dj > ǯ > ž and *o to i remarkable for Proto-Ukrainian and Old Ukrainian, respectively.

When and how did you first get the idea for your research project? 

In September 2018, I first became aware of Kryvorivnia, a village located in the Carpathian Mountains in southwestern Ukraine. At that time, I knew almost nothing about this particular Hutsul area (Hutsul'shchyna) and would have never imagined that its local language features would become the focus of my future doctoral research. Since my second year of bachelor studies, I have been interested in the palatalization (softening) of consonants in the history of Ukrainian dialects, in particular Southwest Ukrainian. Already in my B.A. (2015) and M.A. (2017) thesis, I mapped out the correlation between the degree of palatalization and the peculiarities of Common Slavic vowel development in Slavic dialects, including Southwest and North Ukrainian. I took several field trips to the Kryvorivnia region which allowed me to further my research on palatalization in Proto-Ukrainian and Late Common Slavic. I also investigated the operation of a language tendency in development, i.e., under what ‘strategy’ a phonological system has been evolving and new changes have been occurring.

What brought you to The New York Public Library?

I have heard about this great Library and its Slavic and East European collection. While filling out my application for Fulbright Research and Development Program I specifically underlined the need to do research at The New York Public Library where I can also get direct access to materials held by Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton universities. I marked it as one of the strategic places to visit in New York. Since early August, I have been working in the research study room, and I am already benefiting from this opportunity. I am completing one of the chapters of my dissertation and preparing an article on the mechanism of velar palatalizations in the Southern Ukrainian dialects of late Common Slavic.

What research tools could you not live without?

To answer this question, I would need to sketch out areas I am working in. First, this is phonology and phonetics and the Praat program, a computer software package I use for speech analysis. Then, there are Old Ukrainian manuscripts. I examined some of them, e.g., parish registers from the 18th–19th centuries in Ukraine. At NYPL, I found Moldavian charters from the 14th–17th centuries published in a multi-volume publication Documenta Romaniae Historica that was edited by Michai Berza. Old Ukrainian prevails in most charters, namely the ones from the 14th–16th centuries. They were written in Suceava, Bucharest, and nearby towns in present-day Romania. Reading them, I have discovered interesting details which may shed light on the nature of the so-called dialectal umlaut a>e. To look closer at this phenomenon, I intend to analyze the 12th century Psalter from the Harvard Cyrillic manuscript collection, which represents Old Ukrainian language features before the differentiation in the Southern dialects of Proto-Ukrainian (chronology see Shevelov). And the third and final area of my research is a phonological theory of Common Slavic and Altaic languages. NYPL holds numerous works dealing with palatalizations in Common Slavic, descriptive and historical grammars of Altaic languages, and Slavic language structure.

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

Documenta Romaniae Historica. I knew that other libraries like Kyiv-Mohyla Academy hold some volumes of this publication, yet NYPL's collection is almost complete.

After a day of working and researching, what do you do to unwind?

I walk home on foot which takes me 30 minutes. On leaving the Library building after a day of research, I feel happy and excited. I enjoy people, streets, sun, rain, rush, and noise. On 10th Street, I like making a turn towards the Hudson River to relax while immersing in the calm sound of waves.