Paleographic and orthographic methodology of an old Ukrainian handwritten book attribution: on the issue actualization

In the article we have presented the basic theoretical principles of paleographic and orthographic methodology of an old Ukrainian handwritten book attribution according to the goal and objectives of paleography, its basic principles and methods. Methodology of paleographic and orthographic study comes from the main goal of paleographic attribution – to determine time and place of nonlocalized manuscripts writing by the writing, as well as from the main paleographic principle whereby paleography does not address the reasons of signs putting or words writing one way or another, it only points out the features for unspecifi ed manuscripts definition. It is necessary to use a broad set of principles and methods – both general historical and linguistic, and also special paleogeographic and orthographic. Paleographic and orthographic methodology is based on the observation of orthograms changes that occur by the rules of evolution or in a "revolutionary" way. It provides for the separation of orthograms complex, particularly in the uncial and halfuncial manuscripts of XIV– XVII centuries, typically occurring in a particular period of chronological development of old Ukrainian book written system. We have offered a method of a «formal» approach in the separation of attributive orthographic features, which offers the artifact writing time and place definition by orthograms which are clearly observed in a text (by «external» features), without special linguistic analysis of their cause-and-effect relations. This methodology has developed based on the author's research into a system of vowels, consonants, jot sound rendering, use of letter characters Ъ, Ь and «payerok», the results of which are presented in several papers.