Russian birthday

[Vardanyan, Ashot]

The use of the neuter gender in either of those phrases, especially by PROFESSIONALS in ACADEMIA, is perfectly described as ????. I am sorry but it is somewhat ignorant, completely unacceptable and ????? ???.
 
Ashot Vardanyan  

________________________________

From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of John Hope
Sent: Wed 06-Oct-10 19:48
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: [SEELANGS]



SEELANGTSY!

I appeal to your collective wisdom with a grammar question.  Today a young native speaker newly arrived from Moscow used the phrase ???? ???????? ???? (den' rozhdeniia bylo).  She spelled the phrase ???? ???????? correctly on the board, keeping the genitive, but used the neuter verb form.  When I suggested that this was grammatically incorrect, she told me that nobody now would say "den' rozhdeniia byl" or "moi den' rozhdeniia".

I'd just chalk this up to "kids today," but when I asked an older native speaker, this one a Ph.D.-holding professional teacher of Russian, I was told that, when using the possessive pronoun, ??? ???? ???????? (moe den' rozhden'e) is preferable, i.e. using the neuter form and the uninflected rozhden'e (precisely that, not ???????? / rozhdenie).  I confess, I am unable to understand how such a construction is possible grammatically.  I agree that it is widely encountered (as a Google search demonstrates), but correct? 

Another, older native speaker and professional linguist told me he'd never heard ??? ???? ???????? before, and said that it ?????? ????.  I'm inclined to agree, but not being a native speaker myself I hesitate.  Is anyone able to explain to me by what grammatical understanding the uninflected form and neuter modifier may be considered correct?

Many thanks,

John P. Hope
Colgate University


     

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