Functional and grammatical peculiarities of Ukrainian verbal nouns with the meaning of action comparing to other Slavic languages

The article analyzes the grammatical, semantic and functional features of verbal nouns with the meaning of action in the Ukrainian language on the background of other Slavic languages. Research methods: quantitative formally-semantic analysis of the corpus of Ukrainian nomina actionis, obtained by the continuous sampling method from the largest Ukrainian-language dictionary; a linguistic experiment with native speakers focused on finding out the perception of the aspectual properties of the nomina actionis. In the South Slavic, Western Slavic and Eastern Slavic languages the verbal noun of the action is located at different distances from the verb, and has different grammatical status. The verbal noun with the meaning of action in the Ukrainian language isn’t a verbal form. It is a special category of noun. To a large extent this category of words inherits the verbal aspectual semantics. Absolute majority of Ukrainian verbal nouns is strictly related to the verb of a certain aspect. Almost half of the Ukrainian nomina actionis keeps verbal aspectual pairs. Members of such pairs inherit the verbal aspectual characteristics. This especially refers to those nouns that have retained the formal markers of the aspect (perfective prefixes or imperfective suffixes) The speakers of the Ukrainian language clearly differentiate the members of the prefixed pairs in the speech; less pronounced functional difference between the verbal nouns, which differ of an imperfect suffix. The aspectual peculiarity of the Ukrainian nomina actionis is partially affected by the transposition suffixes. The Ukrainian language avoids the aspectual universality of the nomina actionis, in the system of verbal nouns there is a tendency to express different aspectual meanings using different forms. The ratio of nominal and verbal semantics in these hybrid formations is the unique feature of the Ukrainian grammatical system in comparison with other Slavic languages.