The Big Challenges with Small Numerals in Russian: Linguistic Complexity and Corpus Evidence

Abstract

The Big Challenges with Small Numerals in Russian: Linguistic Complexity and Corpus Evidence

Russian numerals are famous for their syntactic complexity. We examine the behavior of four Russian paucal numerals poltora 'one and a half', dva 'two', tri 'three', četyre 'four' and the quantifier oba 'both'. These small numerals can admit variation in the forms of the words that collocate with them, as shown in Table 1. Nouns can appear in both Nominative plural and Genitive singular, modifiers can appear in both Nominative plural and Genitive plural and be found in three positions (preposed, post-numeral, and post-nominal), and predicates can appear in both Plural and Neuter Singular forms either preceding or following the phrase.

Research questions: Are all logically possible combinations of modifiers attested? To what extent do speakers accept modifiers of different cases in the same construction? Are predicates in the singular and plural equally probable? Is word order relevant? To what extent is the situation changing? Are modifiers in the nominative on an increase, or are genitive modifiers winning out? Is gender a driving force behind the changes?

Evidence: Our study on data from the Russian National Corpus indicates dramatic change over the past two centuries (see Figure 1). Notably, feminine nouns behave differently, so gender seems to play a key role. Furthermore, prosody is also relevant. Most feminine nouns have the same form in the Genitive singular and Nominative plural, but for some nouns (e.g. straná 'country') it is possible to establish which form is used, because they have different stress placements (indicated by accent marks): stranýGen sg vs. strányNom pl. While the form of the quantified noun is clearly of importance for the morphosyntax of numeral phrases, this issue has not been investigated systematically, presumably due to the lack of accentuated corpora. However, the Russian National Corpus now has an accentuated subcorpus. Our study suggests that there is considerable variation among speakers and that nominative plural forms may be on the increase.

Theoretical implications: In addition to filling a knowledge gap about the distribution of forms in Russian numeral phrases, this study contributes to ongoing debates about linguistic complexity.