Question regarding Grammatical Gender vs. Biological Gender in Russian

[Kevin Windle]

Hello, Emily,



There may be very few inanimates, but gorodishka is another (in addition to domina, cited by Denis). Authoritative editions of Lermontov's Geroi nashego vremeni have: Taman' samyi skvernyi gorodishka ...



Google tells me, however, that some editions prefer -ishko: samyi skvernyi gorodishko.



Kevin Windle









-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Denis Akhapkin
Sent: Thursday, 16 June 2011 5:22 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Question regarding Grammatical Gender vs. Biological Gender in Russian



Hello, Emily.



"Слова с уменьшительным и увеличительным значением, мотивированные

существительными муж. р. I скл." (РГ-80, п. 1184)

http://rusgram.narod.ru/1173-1193.html#1184



Ср. "огромный домина".



Best,



Denis Akhapkin



16 июня 2011 г. 2:50 пользователь Emily Saunders <emilka at mac.com> написал:

> Hello,

>

> I thought I'd throw this question out to the SEELANGS wealth of expertise.

>  Masculine nouns occasionally end in -a or -я in names like Ваня, Миша, and

> in words like дедушка, папа, дядя.  And necessarily these take feminine

> declensional endings in spite of the underlying biological masculine gender.

>  My question is whether anyone can think of any *inanimate* masculine nouns

> that end in -a/-я (if there are any)?

>

> Thanks in advance,

>

> Emily Saunders

>

> ------------------------------------------------------

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