Russian partitive over time Michael Daniel (Moscow State University)

An outline of the paper: Brief introduction to the second genitive Is the second genitive a partitive? (or not?) What is the grammatical biography of the second genitive? Is the second genitive in decline? (or not?) Conclusions (if any?)

Brief introduction to the second genitive

Introduction: meet the second genitive In certain contexts, the genitive ending of the second declension –a may be substituted by the second genitive ending –u: Неугодн-оличаю (чая) notdesirable-N.NOMwhethertea-GEN сдороги? fromroad-GEN Would you like some tea, after the trip youve done?

Introduction: meet the second genitive Russian second genitive (partitive): case form with at least apparent functional overlap with the partitives competes with the regular genitive in a number of contexts only available in the second declension formally identical to the dative of the same declension presumably, comes back to the variation arising from the functional pressure from a now obsolete declension on the second declension

Introduction: the data Russian National Corpus ( open project ( ) about 160 mln tokens, from 18-th century to the present as the second genitive is consistently identical to the dative, we need to use exlcusively or mainly the disambiguated corpus (about 6 mln tokens)

Is the second genitive a partitive?

Range of uses: adnominal Пойти билет купить на поезд на родину да две бутылочки лимонаду в дорогу. To go to buy a ticket back to the homeland plus two bottles of soda for the trip. (L. Petrushevskaya 1996) Alternates with the genitive (лимонада)

Range of uses: direct object And he was drawing this painting, his hands were freezing, and he was warming them up… breathing on them... and maybe from his mouth there came the smell of onion, because he ate (some) onion. (E.Grishkovec 2004) А он рисовал эту картину, у него мёрзли руки, и он грел свои руки…, дышал на них…, а изо рта, возможно, пахло луком, потому что он поел луку… Alternates with the genitive, and may alternate with the accusative – but impossible in this context

Range of uses: direct object, negated In principle, I was not going to drink brandy, and no fizz either. (A. Volos 2000) Вообще я не собирался пить ни коньяку, ни шампанского. May alternates with the genitive and may alternate with the accusative – but awkward in this context

Range of uses: accusative vs. genitive And, I all forgot – I wanted to have some juice. (S. Yurskij 1993) Да, совсем забыл, я же хотел выпить соку. Roughly – closer to definiteness / specificity, than to partial affectedness. But it is not a fact about the second genitive, it is a fact about genitive vs. accusative alternation.

Range of uses: direct object, quantified Like her father, she was disposed to be slightly overweight, but she was young and this overweight was sort of airy-light, as egg-whites whisked with sugar, and when he was putting his arms around her fresh body in that crepe-de-Chine dress, she all seemed sweet to him, as if this whiteness indeed had a bit of sugar added to it. (I. Muravyeva 2000) Так же, как отец, она имела склонность к полноте, но по молодости полнота эта была какой-то воздушной, как взбитый с сахаром белок, и, когда он обнимал её прохладное тело в лёгком крепдешиновом платье, вся она казалась ему сладкой, словно в эту белизну и впрямь добавили немного сахару.

Range of uses: subject Plenty of sand in my hair – thought Elena. (L. Ulickaya 2000) Полно песку в волосах – пришло в голову Елене. Alternates with the genitive. Always quantified or negated, although it might sometimes be implicit.

Range of uses: subject, implicit quantification - We need to make it full, I explained, is there enough stuff? – More than enough, she assured, extinguishing her cigarette. (A. Volos 2000) - Надо бы наполнить, пояснил я. - Товару хватит? – Еще останется, успокоила она, гася сигарету.

Range of uses: partitive idioms Что толку? Will that do any good? (lit. What the sense there is?) ни разу... not a single time (with an interesting recent development into at all) ни шагу... to go nowhere (without something/someone) (lit. not (to make) a single step)

Range of uses: prepositional He accused himself of being unable to put his life to order: his wife was ill, his daughter left their house. (L. Ulickaya 2000) Он укорял себя в неумении организовать жизнь: болеет жена, ушла из дому дочь. Alternates with the genitive.

Range of uses: descriptive … немало повидал я красивых женщин, хотя бы на той же Кубани любимая моя медсестра была не последнего ряду, одно время даже самой красивой на всём белом свете казалась. … in my life, I have known many beautiful women, for instance in Kubanj the hospital nurse I was in love with was not bad at all (lit. not of the last row), at some point I even thought her to be the most beautiful woman in the world. (V. Astafyev 1997) Alternates with the genitive (ряда, or better высокого роста)

Range of uses: the classification is expectedly controversial The flat is full of steam (lit. of steam a full flat), and he does not give a damn about it. (A. Volos 2000) Пару полная квартира, а ему хоть бы хны. Adnominal or independent or depending on the adjective? Alternates with the genitive.

Range of uses: the classification is expectedly controversial без толку with no result – prepositional or partitive idiom? cf. что толку what good will it make classified as a partitive idiom before прибавить ходу increase ones pace – DO or idiomatic?

Range of uses: now in a table adnominal with a quantifier noun partitive DO contrasted with accusative partitive subject negated or quantified partitive idioms partitive semantics partitive prepositional all kinds of prepositions, including e.g. spatial ones genitive descriptive genitive of characterization genitive

Range of uses: now on a chart Adnominal DO Subject Descriptive Prepositional Partitive idioms

Relation to the genitive proper: second genitive disallowed or strongly dispreferred - on human nouns (except names of the groups) - dependent on non-quantifying adnominal nouns - in the contexts where the genitive is governed by the verb (rather than alternates with the accusative), excluding verbs governing partitive objects (e.g. containing partitive preverbs, like поесть eat some)

Relation to the genitive proper: second genitive preferred - on certain nouns (with probable morphonological correlations) - in many idioms

Core functions Satellite functions Overlap (definitional properties) (extensions or residues) Another typological categoryA typological category A language specific category

Linguistic biography

Change over time: the statistics of the functions

Second genitive: decline or not? In standard grammars, the second genitive is believed to be on its way down. But Mustajoki et al. argue against that on the base of the analysis of the INTEGRUM database: the form is used quite often. Although Mustajokis suspicion that the standard grammars may be too prescriptive in their judgements seems quite justified, it is not altogether clear how a quantative analysis of a database may provide evidence whether the form becomes more restricted or not without doing time cuts

Second genitive: decline or not? subcorpustokensoccurenceswpm 1866 – – – (fiction) – (press) Occurences of the second genitive

Second genitive: decline or not? 1866 – (fiction) unique lexical items6324 lexical items ocurring only once 4414 mid occurences per lexical item 1,64,1 Lexical diversity

Trajectory Partitive contexts Genitive domain

Conclusions I believe that the data indicate that the second genitive is on its way down: more counts needed The uses are either going to the prepositional domain or idiomatizing (finer analysis needed): both mean that the partitive function is being lost Yet, even at present the share of partitive usages is still high (more than a half): it would be interesting to know when the categorys partitivehood was on its peak And of course, many more interesting counts easily come to mind… (TBC)

Time to part