Soft-n adjectives in Russian

[Jules Levin]

On 12/5/2012 7:19 AM, Richard Robin wrote:
> *Hello, SEELANGS linguists!
>
> This is pure curiosity — probably something they taught me in grad 
> school when I wasn’t paying attention. With the exception of последний 
> and синий, all of the soft-н adjectives that I can think of are either 
> are formed from basic spacial words (верхний, средний, нижний, 
> передний, задний, дальний, ближний) and from the temporal adverbs 
> formed from instrumentals — like утренний and летний. But why? It’s 
> rather rare in Russian (and I assume in the other Slavic languages) 
> for purely semantic categories to influence morphology. Why does it 
> appear to be happening here? And if semantics is the motivating 
> factor, then how to we explain синий? (I suppose последний could be 
> viewed spacially.) Any ideas?*

Well, in Lithuanian both types are motivated: -inis, -inas...
No one can truly understand what is going on in Slavic without taking a 
look at the Baltic languages, especially of course Lithuanian.  But I 
would dispute your claim that purely semantic categories do not 
influence morphology.  Note the whole series of possessive adjs derived 
from animals: volchiy, sobachiy, sviniy, etc.  (One of many examples...)
Jules Levin
Los Angeles







>
> -- 
> Richard M. Robin, Ph.D.
> Director Russian Language Program
> The George Washington University
> Washington, DC 20052
> 202-994-7081
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