Soft-n adjectives in Russian

[Moss, Kevin M.]

I've always assumed that adjective endings were indeed based on semantic categories:

-ский  for nationalities / places, for example, or
-ьный which produces mutations for things made of something  (кирпичный, молочный)
and the ones Jules cites.

and that the -ний  ending was added to words for space and time.

It looks from Vasmer as if синий is different -- it's not an ending, but the softness is in the root, синь  -- and palatalized n and l in Slavic are notorious for hanging on to their palatization (in Serbian they have their own letters).

But I always enjoy pointing out this group of adjectives in second year and commenting about space and time and how we (at least in Indo-European and probably in other languages, Hungarian certainly does it) connect space and time conceptually.

Before/after
a long time / a long road
etc...

KM
On Dec 5, 2012, at 12:49 PM, Jules Levin wrote:

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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