short form Russian adjectives

[John Dunn]

A.A. Zaliznjak's Grammaticheskij slovar' russkogo jazyka gives useful information about which adjectives do or do not have short forms, though the careful terminology used in the explicatory part of the dictionary (p. 69) illustrates to perfection the difficulty in making categorical statements about what does or does not exist in Russian.  I agree with Frank Y. Gladney about the short forms of active participles (it is one of the potential differences between participles and our old friends quasi-participial adjectives), but they did exist for certain 18th-century writers, who would use them, for example, in latinate pseudo-dative-absolute constructions.  It is amazing what one can do with a bit of determination and a classical education.

John Dunn.

-----Original Message-----
From: gladney at UIUC.EDU
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:09:13 -0600
Subject: [SEELANGS] short form Russian adjectives

Frans Suasso cites E.Tauscher and E.G. Kirschbaum, Grammatik der russischen Sprache, where they state, "Keine Kurzformen haben haufig von Verben abgeleitete Adjective auf -lyj, z.B  ustarelyj 'veraltet, unmodern', umelyj 'eschickt, gewandt', ostalyj 'rückständig'. osirotelyj 'verwaist'." 

This is generally true of active participles in Russian.  There are no short forms corresponding to _ustareiushchii_ or _ustarevshii_ either.

Frank Y. Gladney


John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
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Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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