Surrey Database of Short Term Morphosyntactic Change: Case of modifier in phrases with ‘two’, ‘three’, ‘four’

The notion of 'short term morphosyntactic change' can be used to characterise changes
in the use of forms in a short period of time even when the forms themselves have
changed relatively little. The Short Term Morphosyntactic Change (STMC) Databases
explore change in six different morphosyntactic phenomena in Russian over a 200 year
period from 1801-2000.

Numerals in Russian and in Slavonic more generally are notorious for their complex
syntax and morphology. Some of this complexity results from the loss of the dual in
most of the Slavonic languages, which led to strange combinations within quantifier
phrases. In particular, quantifier phrases with the numerals dva ‘two’ , tri ‘three’
and četyre ‘four’ allow alternative case marking on attributive adjectives. When the
phrase is in the nominative or accusative, adjectives are either in that case, or
they are governed by the numeral and take the genitive.

We can make some sense of this pattern; there is a typological generalization
according to which, when numerals vary in their behaviour, the higher will be more
noun-like. The phrases above fall between those with odin ‘one’, which shows many
adjective-like characteristics, and pjat´ ‘five’, which requires the genitive plural
of nouns and adjectives; see Corbett (1993 for details and
references). Thus there is partial motivation for the alternative forms. Perhaps
surprisingly, the choice between the forms is constrained by several factors: the
properties of the numeral, the properties of the noun, the case of the quantified
expression and the position of the modifier. The data available in the database allow
the user to explore the complex interaction of these conditioning factors. The
general development over the last two centuries has been a dramatic shift in favour
of the genitive. Initially, the gender and animacy of the noun affected the
nominative/genitive variation, while the syntactic case of the whole phrase
(nominative or accusative) had no noticeable effect. In later periods we find a split
within feminine nouns with respect to syntactic case: genitive adjectives are
slightly more frequent with accusative phrases than with nominative. Most recently
(in second half of the 20th century) the influence of syntactic case has been
weakened or eliminated, but another factor, animacy, has come into play affecting
choices in phrases with feminine nouns. Gender, however, remains an important factor:
while phrases with masculine and neuter nouns have generalized a new model using just
genitive adjectives, those with feminine nouns retain the two possibilities, and in
fact still favour the nominative.