modifiers declension question (Russian language question)

[J.Dunn at SLAVONIC.ARTS.GLA.AC.UK]

Here are some suggested answers to Michael Denner's questions.

>First: Why is the modifier ending for Õ¦ /'צ /"צ  -‰  and not -£  as it
>should be?

Since the change e>o does not take place before soft consonants
(including/j/), it is the pronouns with -ej that are virtuous and the nouns
with -joj that are perverse and capricious.  I would blame the discrepancy
on the usual suspect - analogy (i.e. with the hard declension pattern with
-oj), noting that Russian eliminates any non-automatic differences between
the hard and soft noun declension patterns.

>Second: When did gender distinction in the plural disappear from Russian?

If you assume that the loss of gender distinction in the plural is a
necessary pre-condition for the spread of the genitive-accusative to
non-masculine personal nouns in the plural and probably also for the
merging of the different declension types in the dative, instrumental and
locative plural, then it must be sometime before the 16th century.  Gender
distinctions enjoyed an artificial reincarnation in the written language
between 1733 and 1918.

As far as I know, gender distinctions are lost in the plural in all East
Slavonic languages and also in Macedonian and Bulgarian.  Most West
Slavonic languages have a two-gender system in the plural: Polish
distinguishes masculine personal from all the rest; obecna cestina
distinguishes masculine animate from the rest; Slovak, it seems, is
somewhere inbetween, but spisovna cestina also distinguishes neuter.
Sorbian is complicated, and I will leave it to someone else. I understand
that Slovene and the successor languages to Serbo-Croat have the same
three-gender system in the plural as in the singular.

No doubt someone wiser and more knowledgeable than I will correct all
errors and omissions in the above.

John Dunn.


John Dunn
Department of Slavonic Studies
Hetherington Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow
G12 8RS
Great Britain

Telephone (+44) 141 330-5591
Fax       (+44) 141 330-2297
e-mail    J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk

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