GEN.PL of _svecha_ and other such words in Russian

[Ralph Cleminson]

> Loren Billings wrote:
> >Hom amny other forms like svech have gone to svechej?  Are they linked to
> >stress?

And then Robert Davison wrote:
>
> typos apart, i am bemused by the term "calcified expression". I thought
> calcification and sclerosis has something to do with Zamyatin's "My". Are
> there also sclerotic expressions? As for "its not woth the candle", i have
> difficulty figuring out the english meaning, let alone the russian. similar
> to "it takes the biscuit"? As was remarked earlier, not all of us have
> native speaker fluency - whatever that might mean. I know several native
> speakers who are functionally illiterate and incoherent. diachronic
> transition indeed!


"The game's not worth the candle", which I would have thought was
perhaps more current in English than its equivalent in Russian, means
that the profit or enjoyment derived from an activity does not
justify the expense or energy invested in it, and originates in the
days when gentlemen used to play cards by candlelight.

The Gpl ending -ej seems to have spread to all nouns with Nsg in -a
which have stem ending in a soft consonant, sh or zh and which are
stressed on the ending in the oblique cases of the plural.  The best
guide to what is standard morphology in modern Russian seems to be
A.A.Zaliznjak, "Grammaticheskij slovar' russkogo jazyka", which can
be consulted to verify individual cases.

As for native speakers who are functionally illiterate and
incoherent, it is presumably they who are the originators of
sclerotic expressions.









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Ralph Cleminson, Reader in Slavonic Studies, University of Portsmouth
ralph at hum.port.ac.uk
http://www.hum.port.ac.uk/Users/ralph.cleminson/home.htm
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