MORPHONOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF NOUNS WITH -KA ELEMENT IN THE FINAL PART

Abstract

Nouns containing -ka in their final part have some distinct common properties: they have homogeneous and salient inflectional endings and belong to most frequent (1st and 2nd) declension classes, they are mostly built with several productive derivation patterns and therefore, gain in type and token frequency. This paper addresses some other, not so obvious particularities of this morphonological group. Their accentual types in several case forms tend to be connected with certain semantic groups (e. g., four syllabic masculine nouns in the genitive mostly denote masculine nouns meaning occupation: ljubovnika ‘lover-Gen’, nachal’nika ‘chief-Gen’), thus, helping to disambiguate the usual case syncretism. The data is taken from the frequency lists of word forms of the Corpus of Russian literary language. Accentual types were defined by the number of syllables and by the stress placement. The observations are interpreted from the point of view of systemic approach to modern Russian grammar including the further elaboration of bootstrapping mechanisms that are usually in play during speech perception by adults and language acquisition by children. In this case we deal with the morphonological bootstrapping determining the hidden preferences of speakers. These observations serve as a base for future experimental study of this and similar morphonological groups that should be taken into consideration during the analysis of productive derivation patterns and their structural functions, the correlation of semantic, pragmatic and structure, as well as their perceptive capacities. The prediction for experimental study is that nouns with -ka in the final part should be earlier recognized in the reaction time experiments, easier processed and, probably, earlier acquired by children. Another development of this topic is a similar description of the final -k- of the stem followed by other vowels marking oblique cases, like e, u, i and o, that, however, would be not as promising because of poorer syncretism in the sphere of other inflectional endings. Refs 20.