Italianisms and Pseudo-Italianisms in the Ukrainian Gastronomic Lexicon

The article examines recent borrowings from Italian into Ukrainian, namely oneword terms from the field of Italian gastronomy and cuisine, non-equivalent lexemes such as food names, food ingredients, preparation technologies, which have no analogues in other culinary cultures, and therefore, present significant difficulties in rendering into other languages. The analysis is carried out on a corpus of components of the menus of twenty restaurants in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv specializing in Italian cuisine and provides original empirical data to better interpret and understand various phenomena of linguistic interference between Ukrainian and Italian. The findings demonstrate that a large number of recent borrowings are undergoing some initial changes with phonological adjustments and markers of the target language, although these words are not yet codified in lexicographic sources. Such empirical materials make it possible not only to investigate the process of adaptation at different stages (spelling, semantic, grammatical, word building), but – in many cases – to record the very moment of borrowing, allowing some important issues to be raised: in particular, on basic type of loanwords and their adaptation to the Ukrainian language system, on the role and place of borrowings with regard to the Ukrainian linguistic heritage, as well as to actualize the question of the relationship between language and culture in the Ukrainian context.