Two chairs

[E Wayles Browne]

And it's worthwhile to look at the hits carefully. For "dva stula",
Google gives real sentences, for example:

... V komnatax na stenax oboi, na polu - kovrovoe pokrytie ili kover,k
dve krovati, stol, dva stula, ...

...ili kupit' 300 uchebnikov, 10 klassnyx dosok, 15 komplektov
shkol'noj mebeli (parta i dva stula)...

On the other hand, the hits for "dva stul'ja" are partly (1) random
strings of words, partly (2) grammatical discussions of what one does
not say, partly (3) instances in which dva is at the end of one sentence
and Stul'ja is at the beginning of another...
and (4), notably, Russian sentences from sites ending in .ua, that is,
from Ukraine. Someone who speaks both Russian and Ukrainian may be
tempted to carry the Ukrainian pattern (dva, try, chotyry  plus
nominative plural) into Russian usage too.

(1) ...skladnye pokupka defekty pletenoj soedinenija na dva stul'ja
skladnye pokupka vitka neobxodimo prutjanye stojki krepit' k (vintami)...

(2) Razvitie rechi u detej. Malysh delaet oshibki.
A vot Gera 3 let 8 mesjacev uzhe xorosho zapomnil, chto mnozhestvennoe
chislo od slova - "stul" - "stul'ja": "U menja v komnate dva stul'ja,
a u tebja skoko?"

(3) Stoliki sami po sebe ne ochen' bol'shie, luchshe vzjat' dva. Stul'ja?
Zavisit ot postupivshego budzheta. Mozhno vzjat' raskladnye....

(4) ... Stol i dva stul'ja iz IKEA Nabor dlja mal'chika v roddom novyj .
Ukraina > KYJIV > Kyjiv ...
kiev.olx.com.ua/fisher-price-iid-58812526 -
-- 
Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall 220, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu

> As a native speaker, I always say "dva stula", never "dva stulia". So does
> Russian internet: if you google both (in quotation marks, so that it
> searches for the exact word combination only) you get 51800 vs 341 hits.
>
> Andrey
>
> ----
> Dr. Andrey Shcherbenok
> Newton Research Fellow
>

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