Soft-n adjectives in Russian

[Alina Israeli]

I would agree with Jules that we find plenty of examples where  
semantics influence morphology.

Looking at the list of ‒ний adjectives, what strikes me is that  
the vast majority are possessives: бараний, мужний,  
олений, тюлений etc. So the adjectives Rich listed could  
be described as 'pertaining to X': летний — pertaining to  
лето etc. -j- was a nice possessive suffix (which shows up so  
beautifully in Ярославль).

As for синий, it would be nice to know what came first, the  
chicken or the egg, or rather синий or синь. We do have other  
historic nouns that became numerals, for example. So we very well  
could have a noun here first. Historian of the language could answer  
this question.

Alina

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
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Russkiy tekst v UTF-8
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Use 
>>  your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription  
>> options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface  
>> at: http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/  
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Use 
>  your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription  
> options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at: http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/ 
>   
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alina Israeli
Associate Professor of Russian
WLC, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington DC 20016
(202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu






-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/seelang/attachments/20121205/7b2b4431/attachment.html>