The role of historical and dialectal data in interpreting the modern word-formation phenomena

Abstract

The author proposes the idea that it is necessary to draw on historical and dialectal data in the analysis of the modern word-formation phenomena. The comparison of the modern Russian literary language facts with those of the written language history and the modern dialect speech allows to estimate, with maximum objectivity, the linguistic status of the derivative units, models, subsystems, as well as to reconstruct the whole picture of their usage in the national language and to better understand the directions of linguistic dynamics and the derivational potential of the language. This approach is illustrated by the formation of the adjectives ending with -ovskij in the Russian language. The question of the word-formation structure of such adjectives is debatable in the modern derivatology. The affi xal part of the adjectives ending with -ovskij is defi ned in diff erent ways: 1) as a suffi xal sequence including two diff erent formants, 2) as a suffi x -sk-, complicated with the interfi x -ov-, 3) as a derived suffi xal morph with accumulation. The picture of structural and semantic connections of the above-mentioned adjectives in the modern Russian literary language is complicated, heterogeneous and does not give precedence to any of these three interpretations. The analysis of the adjectives ending with -ovskij in the complex of the modern Russian literary language data, its history and the modern territorial dialects, gives ground to the following interpretation of -ovskij complex. At the modern stage of the Russian language development the sequence -ov/sk(ij) is a morphemic complex, that has developed on the basis of the ancient suffi xal duplication model of the relative and possessive suffi xes -ov(y’j) + -sk(ij). The morphemic complex -ov/sk(ij) is functioning in the modern Russian language as a single polysemantic segmented bisuffi xal formant, which has not formed, up to now, a unifi ed morpheme – a complex suffi x. A morphemic complex, as opposed to a complex suffi x, is easily divided into components and provides a basis to re-derivation processes.

Keywords

• word-formation
• the russian language history
• the russian dialectology
• adjectives
• suffi xation
• morphemic complex