Soft-n adjectives in Russian

Mon Dec 10 10:32:13 UTC 2012

After reading many good comments on -j- as a possessive suffix, I'm 
tempted to add a few points of view (this is the first time I write 
anything on SEELANGS).
It looks like there are at least three different historical suffixes 
that contain -j- as an integral part and that can be classified as 
relative or possessive in a broad sense:
1. *-j- alone that can be seen in nouns like Ярославль (as pointed out 
by Alina Israeli) and Владимирь > Владимир (the town), but also in 1st 
and 2nd person possessive pronouns мой, твой, наш, ваш (*nā s-j- > *nāš- 
etc.). I am tempted to see the same *-j- in the historical and borrowed 
active present participles, since *j preceded by both *k and *t yield *č 
in East-Slavonic and *št in OCS (and, incidentally, Bulgarian).
2. adjective *-nj- that yields *n' with normal soft adjective declension 
(e.g. летний, замужний, ихний).
3. *-ĭj- > *-ьj- (the latter in traditional notation that I generally 
don't like) with short endings in Nom. and Acc. in Russian, that are, 
thus, "faux soft-n adjectives", as put by Robert Channon. The Masc. Nom. 
Sg. ending is a zero, and the -и- in бараний is a "беглый гласный" 
(sorry, I cannot recall a proper English equivalent for the term). It is 
obvious that the soft adjective ending has affected the form as the 
historical suffix would have yielded -ей before a zero ending. This 
suffix can be seen in adjectives related to different animals, but also 
in третий.

Regards,
Jouni Vaahtera
Helsinki, Finland

On 5.12.2012 23:04, Moss, Kevin M. wrote:
> Bob beat me to it.
>
> I think it's fascinating that some of the soft-n suffixed adjectives that don't carry the expected meaning are in fact possessives of animate male people, which have or would have had soft or irregular plurals (сын, муж).  I think I would be tempted to add ихний to this list.
>
> In response to John, all those adjectives in "чий" are actually old Russian forms of the participle/verbal adjective, as opposed to the South Slavic or OCS -щий.
>
> KM
>
> On Dec 5, 2012, at 3:46 PM, Robert Channon wrote:
>
> And if semantics is the motivating factor, then how to we explain синий?
>
> All the other n’ adjectives (other than синий and the possessives in -j-) have the suffix n’, whereas in синий the n’ belongs to the root and there is no suffix.  That’s the way in which синий stands apart from the other n’ adjectives, not because of semantics.  (Morphology to the rescue!)  And then there is a very small number (count ‘em on one hand) of other unsuffixed soft adjectives that have some other consonant at the end of the stem.  Синий really goes with them, and not with the suffixed ones originally mentioned; it’s just an accident that the root of синий ends in n’ that is like the suffix.
>
> The possessives in -j- (бараний, вороний, etc.) stand apart not only because they have a different suffix, but also because they have a different declension, not the "canonical" soft adjective declension.  So they are really “faux soft-n adjectives”.
>
> Also, morphemes carry meaning, so I agree that it’s not surprising that a suffix has a semantic meaning along with a grammatical one (even if only in most if not all words), and there are plenty of instances of that in Russian and other languages.  There are also some instances of the soft-n suffix which don’t seem to carry the “expected” meaning: искренний, сыновний, мужний/замужний, пустопорожний, and a few others.
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Alina Israeli<aisrael at american.edu<mailto:aisrael at american.edu>>  wrote:
> 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
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> --
> Richard M. Robin, Ph.D.
> Director Russian Language Program
> The George Washington University
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> Alina Israeli
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