Functional Potential of Adjective Word Forms in Russian

Abstract

Purpose. Analysis of literature on Russian morphology revealed the problems related to functional potential of adjective word-forms and the morphological content of indeclinable nouns. There are three viewpoints on features of indeclinable substantives: 1) they have categories of types, numbers, and cases, while the number and case appear as homonymous forms with zero ending; 2) all categories of presented forms are used as inflection of adjectival words; 3) these substantives have no categories of number and case but have their syntactic meanings. The article's purpose is to determine functions of adjective word forms in combination with inflected and indeclinable substantives, specifying the morphological content of the indeclinable ones.Results. Adjectives in combination with declinable nouns perform the structural function of agreement in gender, number, and case. However, when combined with two-generic words, they lose the generic agreement. Adjective inflections express the meanings of gender, number, and case in the adjective structure itself; the same-name dominant substantives only reflect these meanings, being their material indicator.With indeclinable nouns, adjectival word forms agree only by gender, also being just an indicator of it. Indeclinable substantives have no number and case meanings. Adjective word forms with an indeclinable substantive independently express quantitative and case meanings without participation of a substantive.