Dynamics of changes in Russian verbal paradigm under the influence of secondary imperfectivation

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Introduction

During his years of teaching at Kazan University, I.A. Baudouin de Cour­tenay developed a lecture course where he outlined the laws of “equilibrium” and “historical movement” of language and pointed out the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to study those laws: “… the languages under study should be subjected to a comprehensive element-by-element analysis in all possible directions”; “… it is necessary to apply quantitative mathematical thinking more often in linguistics and thus bring it closer to the exact sciences”; “linguistic generalizations will cover a wider range of sciences and increasingly connect linguistics with other sciences: psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology”, ‘the notions of language development and evolution is to become the basis of thinking’ (Baudouin de Courtenay, 1963: 17).

 Prominent representatives of Kazan School of Linguistics (Krushevskii, 1883; Anastasiev, 1898; Bogoroditskii, 1911), developed these ideas into the doctrine of sta­tics and dynamics, which has gained special relevance in the works of modern Russian researchers of linguistic norms (Rosental’, 1988; Bondarko, 2002; Graudina, 2004; Dorofeev, Zhuravleva, 2023; Zdorikova, Abyzov, Makarova, 2022; Zhdanova, Ratsiburskaya, 2024). The issues of historical dynamics are relevant for many areas of modern linguistics since language system evolution is manifested in variation. A particular case of language evolution manifestation is synchronous grammatical variants of one word form among which one is initially considered preferable and the other one violating stylistic norms. These violations often represent a prototype of a future norm: “the development of languages in general consists primarily of changes that were initially perceived as errors from the point of view of the modern norm” (Matezius, 1967: 360).

Following A.V. Bondarko, we understand the norm as “a set of phenomena authorized by the language system, selected and fixed in the speech of native speakers and obligatory for all speakers of the literary language in a certain period of time” (Bondarko, 2002: 14). Information technologies simplified quantitative description of redundant and “competing” paradigm variants in book language. We mean such a confluence of circumstances due to historical changes in the gram­matical system when a linguistic innovation previously considered an error or com­monplace competes in frequency with the established form which is perceived as the rule (Gorbachevich, 2009: 240; Smirnov, 2010: 272–298; Tatevosov 2013: 42–89; Gorbova 2016: 149–158).

Foreign linguistics also has “quantitative and mathematical thinking” (Baudouin de Courtenay, 1963), for example, when studying unification of irregular verbs in English. The work “Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language” (Lieberman et al., 2007: 716–723) revealed that irregular verb forms gradually give way to an emerging linguistic rule and determined how unification rate depends on the frequency of words-exceptions. We prove that high-frequency English verbs are less likely than low-frequency verbs to undergo regularization, i.e. transition from the group of irregular verbs to the group of regular verbs.

A similar study analyzed the competition between German verbs of strong (regular) and weak (irregular) conjugation by foreign (Carroll, Svare, Salmons, 2012: 153–172) and domestic linguists (Piperski, 2014: 821–831). The study quantitatively confirm “the intuitive assumption that higher-frequency words usually retain their conjugation form while less common words may change” (Piperski, 2014: 821–831) under the influence of similar forms and move from weak to strong.

There are several similar phenomena of verb variation in the Russian language. These are personal forms with fluctuating productivity/non-productivity of the verb class in the present (alchet / alkaet ‘(he/she longs for)’, koleblet / kolebaet ‘he/she shakes’) and past tense (voznik / vozniknul ‘arose’), two-aspect verbs and their non-homonymic suffixal correlates (organizovat’ / organozivovyvat’ ‘to organize’), secondary imperfectives (nakoplyat’ / nakaplivat’ ‘to accumulate’), and in the cate­gory of secondary imperfectives alternations in the root vowel (obuslovlivaet / obuslavlivaet ‘he / she / it conditions). Having experience in the study of the first, second, third and fifth types (Galeev, Solovyev, 2016: 177–180; Galeev, Habibulina, 2017: 90–98; Galeev, Shevlyakova, Bochkarev, 2020: 145–154), we would like to focus on the fourth type of variation (nakoplyat’ / nakaplivat’ ‘to accumulate’, izgotovlyat’ / izgotavlivat’ ‘to make’) in this article.

Let us discuss the reasons for this redundancy.

As a result of the verb bases rearrangement in the early 12th century, the productive suffix -yva/iva- appeared. Being initially an indicator of verbal action incompleteness, in the Middle Russian period the suffix acquires the meaning of iterativity (repeatability) (khazhival ‘used to go’, posmatrivayu ‘look from time to time’) (Klimonov, 2015: 155–164). Since the beginning of the 18th century, the marker of iterativity has been preserved only in colloquial speech (vidival ‘saw several times’) and in vernacular (pozvanivayu ‘I sometimes call’). So we can speak about “a multicomponent concept of aspect” (Paducheva, 2013). In the 20th century, book speech liberalization and editorial activity weakening, prefixal verbs get variation of forms with suffixes -yva/iva- // -a/ya- (Graudina, 2004). Linguistic evolution has led to the situation that in the last 70 years the personal forms of the verb nakaplivat’ ‘to accumulate’ have become more frequent than those of the verb nakoplyat’ ‘to accumulate’ (Zeldovich, 2014; Kozera, 2018).

The aim of this research is to identify objective syntagmatic and paradigmatic factors (extrasyllabic syngarmonism, evolution of the morphological structure of the word, lexical combinability, style) that determine the choice of one of the competing suffixes on the example of variant verbs of the redundant paradigm with secondary imperfectivization -a/ya- and -yva/iva-.

Materials and methods

To describe the “spontaneic process” of sound and morpheme transforma­tions in the history of language, we follow I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and N.V. Krushevsky and adhere to strict statistical methods using approaches of exact sciences (Baudouin de Courtenay, 1963; Krushevsky, 1883).

To analyze verb variants competition, we use corpus and quantitative methods with elements of correlation and regression analysis.

The material of the article includes data of the Russian-language subcorpus of the Google Books library with 67 billion word uses (Lin et al., 2012). The Ngram Viewer service is based on this library.

The method of word formation modeling was used to compile the list of varia­tive verbs. In order to expand the list of 39 verbs from reference books, including (Graudina, 2004: 557), we set the search model of verb pairs “N + yva + X // N + ya + X” and “N + yva + X // N + a + X”, where N is the verb base common to the two forms and X is the same inflection in the two forms. With the help of the model we discovered 48 verb pairs not included in reference books. So we used the corpus of texts as a source of hidden data about the language and a means of enriching dictionaries.

We compared forms throughout the paradigm pairwise: personal verb forms, past tense, participles, adverbial participles, and imperatives (up to 15 elements).

To determine the semantic factors influencing verb form competition, we applied a conjunction analysis, as we consider it a quantitative representation of the verb semantics according to the distributive hypothesis (Sahlgren, 2008: 33-53).

Results

To evaluate the linguistic dynamics of 87 verb paradigms (1305 pairs), 882 word frequency graphs were constructed on the material of texts of the Russian-language part of the Google Books corpus for the period 1800-2008 and the main patterns of change in verb pairs frequency were described. These graphs represent the nature of form competition for more than two centuries, classify the obtained cases and identify similarities in similarly behaving variant pairs by formal features: phonetics, combinability, and stylistics. Classification of the obtained results showed the picture of “competition” among redundant forms.

The analysis of combinability has shown that when one dominant form changes and the other remains in speech (e.g., in the 1940s, the form nakaplivat ‘accumulate’ surpasses the form nakoplyat’ ‘accumulate’ in frequency), verbs differ in lexical combinability: abstract nouns are used with the verb nakaplivat’ ‘accumulate’ (... energy, knowledge, experience, information, forces, means), while the verb nakoplyat’ ‘to accumulate’ is used with concrete nouns, usually with the semantics of “material values” (wealth, money, debts, forces, material, money, stocks).

The authors revealed that the texts in the corpus belong to major genres of fiction and journalism, which makes the resulting collection of examples stylistically homogeneous. Consequently, some extra-linguistic factors, such as the author’s literacy level and editing, do not have a significant impact on the nature of competition. Thus, when discussing the results of the study, we were able to dwell in detail on the analysis of the phonetic and morphological levels of the language in different time periods when this or that form prevailed was withdrawn. This showed the correlation of linguistic changes with the norm-forming activity of writers and publicists.

Discussion

Having formed a sample and plotted the dynamics of word-form frequency, we relate the quantitative measure of the frequency of each verb pair over 200 years (1) and the prevalence of each variant in book speech (2) to the behavior of competing pairs before proceeding to the phonetic and morphological analysis of competing variants (3–6).

1. Dynamics of the competition of redundant forms

33.9% of cases contained only one of the forms: -a/ya- (Fig. 1). As mentioned above, the forms on -a/ya- (vymeryaesh ‘you measure’) are considered to be more ancient relative to the secondary imperfective vymerivaesh’ you measure’. This is reflected in the book speech of the 19th–20th centuries.

In the remaining 66.1% of cases, there is a competition of different dynamics over a two-century time interval. Let us divide the cases of competition by frequency dynamics into several groups:

1. The frequency of the variant with the suffix -a/ya- falls with the corresponding growth of the secondary imperfective (e.g., prisposoblyat’ / prisposablivat’ ‘to adapt’) in 13.9% of cases (Fig. 2).
2. Both forms are equally frequent during the period, and only at the end of the 20th century the -a/ya- form predominates (e.g., prostuzhalsya instead of prostuzhivalsya ‘used to catch a cold’) in 13.2% of cases (Fig. 3).
3. The dominance of the -a/ya- form with stable, but lesser use of the -yva/iva- form (e.g., obosoblyat’ ‘to detach’ is usually used, but the form obosablivat’ is also found) in 10.8% of cases (Fig. 4).
4. Decrease in the frequency of both verb forms by the end of the 20th century, which testifies for the norm change (e.g., in the 19th century, the form obrezyvayete ‘you are cutting’ was more frequent, while at the present stage it is equal to the form obrezayete) in 10.1% of cases (Fig. 5).
5. Both forms are equally frequent throughout the entire period (e.g. pair primeryat’sya / primerivat’sya ‘to try on’) in 7.9% of cases (Fig. 6).
6. After a long period of high frequency of both competing forms in the beginning of the 21st century, one of the variants surpasses the other in frequency as in the initial phase of the type with suffix -a/ya- (e.g., ozdoravlivat’ ‘to make healthier’ becomes more frequent than ozdorovlyat’ ‘to make healthier’), in 6.9% of cases (Fig. 7).
7. A steady increase in the frequency of one competing form (e.g., osmyslivat’ ‘to comprehend’ prevails over osmyslyat’) over a long period in 2.1% of cases (Fig. 8).
8. The dominant form changes twice in 1.2% of cases (zakalyali ‘(they) hardened’ in the 19th century and until the 1960s → zakalivali in the second half of the 20th century → zakalyali in the 21st century) (Fig. 9).

2. The influence of frequency on the competition outcome

To reveal the influence of redundant verb paradigm forms frequency on the tendency to suffix choice, we follow the researchers of English irregular verbs (Lieberman et al., 2007) and apply the ranking method to compare the most (90–280 thousand word uses) and least (less than 10 thousand) frequent verbs in the frequency ranking (Table 1).

We revealed a tendency to choose the suffix -a/-ya, similar to Charts 3 and 8 with the paradigms of the least frequent verbs vymer(ya/iva)t’ ‘to measure’, zasor(ya/iva)t’ ‘to clog’, nakal(ya/iva)t’ ‘to heat up’, obmer(ya/iva)t’ ‘to measure out’, oporozhn(ya/iva)t’ ‘to empty’, prostuzh(a/iva)t’ ‘to chill’ and their reflexive forms. In the 19th century, both variants were equally widespread.

The most widespread verbs (vyrezat’ ‘to cut’, prigotovlyat’ ‘to prepare’, srezat’ ‘to cut off’, suzhat’sya ‘to shrink’, uskoryat’ ‘to accelerate’ and their reflexive forms) replace the variant with -iva/yva-, which prevailed in the 19th century, with the variant with -a/ya- in the middle of the 20th century. This is like the graph in Figure 2.

Here are the cases where the variant with -yva/iva- prevails over the previously prevailing variant with -a/ya-: izgotavlivat’ ‘to make’, nakaplivat’ ‘to accumulate’, nadlomlyat’ ‘to break’, vyzdoravlivat’ ‘to recover’, prisposablivat’sya ‘to adjust’.

Thus, the prevalence of the verb with variation associated with secondary imperfectivization in book speech does not affect the outcome of the competition; the prevalence of forms with -a/ya- after a long competition is the same among both frequent and rare verbs.

Let us turn to the linguistic factors proper, which can affect the variant assertion. Table summarizes cases of competition of variant forms of verbs with morphological and phonetic parameters.

Cases of competition of variable forms of verbs with morphological and phonetic parameters

№	Verbs	Prefix	Root  vowel	Variation in the root	Status of “L”	Postfix	Average frequency over 208 years, % in the total volume of the corpus Google Books Ngram	The result of the competition
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1	вкраплять / вкрапливать	в-	а	–	корневой	–	0.000005	-я- established
2	вкрапляться / вкрапливаться	в-	а	–	корневой	+	0.0000086	-я- is taking shape
3	втравлять / втравливать	в-	а	–	корневой	–	0.00000375	-ива- established
4	вылеплять / вылепливать	вы-	е	–	корневой	–	0.000003	long-term competition
5	вылепляться / вылепливаться	вы-	е	–	корневой	+	0.000001	-ива- prevails
6	вылупляться / вылупливаться	вы-	у	–	l-epent.	+	0.0000255	-я- prevails
7	вымерять / вымеривать	вы-	е	–	–	–	0.0000125	-я- prevails
8	вырезать / вырезывать	вы-	е	–	–	–	0.00023	-а- prevails
9	вытравлять / вытравливать	вы-	а	–	l-epent.	–	0.000022	-ива- is taking shape
10	вытравляться /  вытравли- ваться	вы-	а	–	корневой	–	0.000005	established first -ива-, then -я-
11	выхвалять / выхваливать	вы-	а	–	корневой	–	0.000025	-а- prevails
12	выхваляться / выхваливаться	вы-	а	–	–	+	0.0000075	-я- prevails
13	забелять / забеливать	за-	е	–	корневой	–	0.0000015	-ива- prevails
14	заготовлять / заготавливать	за-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.00013	-ива- is taking shape
15	заготовлять­- ся / заготавливаться	за-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.0000625	the frequency has equalized, then -ива- is growing
16	закалять / закаливать	за-	а	–	корневой	–	0.0000550	-я- prevails
17	закаляться / закаливаться	за-	а	–	корневой	+	0.000054	-я- prevails
18	замерять / замеривать	за-	е	–	–	–	0.000024	-я- detected
19	запаять / запаивать	за-	а	–	–	–	0.000013	established first -ива-, then -я-
20	засорять / засаривать	за-		о/а	–	–	0.00001	-я- prevails
21	засоряться / засариваться	за-		о/а	–	+	0.0000030	-я- prevails
22	затоплять / затапливать	за-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.00005	-ива- is growing
23	изготовлять / изготавливать	из-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.0005	-ива- is taking shape
24	изготовлять- cя / изготавливатьcя	из-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.000404	-ива- is growing
25	измерять / измеривать	из-	е	–	–	–	0.00055	-я- detected
26	надломлять / надламывать	над-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.000006	-ива- detected
27	надломляться / надламываться	над-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.0000057	long-term competition
28	накалять / накаливать	на-	а	–	корневой	–	0.000024	-ива- established
29	накаляться / накаливаться	на-	а	–	корневой	+	0.000011	-ива- established
30	накоплять / накапливать	на-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.000080	-ива- established
31	накопляться / накапливаться	на-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.00053	-ива- established
32	намеряться / намериваться	на-	е	–	–	–	0.000006	-ива- established
33	натравлять / натравливать	на-	а	–	l-epent.	–	0.000045	-ива- established
34	натравляться /  натравли- ваться	на-	а	–	l-epent.	+	0.00000225	-ива- established
35	обмерять / обмеривать	о-	е	–	–	–	0.000013	after long-term competition -ива- established
36	обособлять / обосабливать	об-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.00003	-я- prevails
37	обособлять- ся / обосабливаться	об-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.0000225	-я- prevails
38	обрезать / обрезывать	о-	е	–	–	–	0.00009	-а- established
39	огранять / огранивать	о-	а	–	–	–	0.0000016	-ива- established
40	ограняться / ограниваться	о-	а	–	–	–	0.00000040	-ива- established
41	одарять / одаривать	о-	а	–	–	–	0.00005	the -а- retained the same frequency, but the -ива- surpassed it
42	одаряться / одариваться	о-	а	–	–	+	0.0000015	-ива- established
43	оздоровлять / оздоравливать	о-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.000014	-ива- established
44	оздоровлять- ся / оздоравливаться	о-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.0000032	-ива- established
45	окормлять / окармливать	о-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.000012	-я- prevails
46	опалять / опаливать	о-	а	–	корневой	–	0.000013	long-term competition
47	опаляться / опаливаться	о-	а	–	корневой	–	0.0000042	-я- prevails
48	опорожнять / опоражнивать	о-	о	–	–	–	0.000016	-я- established
49	опорожнять- ся / опоражниваться	о-		о/а	–	+	0.00000300	-я- established
50	опылять / опыливать	о-	ы	–	корневой	–	0.000022	-я- established
51	опыляться / опыливаться	о-	ы	–	корневой	+	0.0000153	-я- established
52	осмыслять / осмысливать	о-	ы	–	?	–	0.00014	-ива- prevails
53	остужать / остуживать	о-	у	–	–	–	0.000014	-а- prevails
54	отмерять / отмеривать	от-	е	–	–	–	0.000052	-я- established
55	отмеряться / отмериваться	о-	е	–	–	+	0.0000112	-я- prevails
56	отравлять / отравливать	о-	а	–	l-epent.	–	0.00017	-я- established
57	перебелять / перебеливать	пере-	е	–	корневой	–	0.0000028	long-term competition
58	перемерять / перемеривать	пере-	е	–	–	–	0.0000048	-я- established
59	переосмыс- лять / пере- осмысливать	пере-	ы	–	?	–	0.000043	-ива- established
60	переосмысляться / переосмысливаться	пере-	ы	–	?	+	0.0000307	long-term competition
61	подготов- лять / подготавливать	под-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.0003	-ива- established
62	подготовляться / подготавливаться	под-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.00017	-ива- established
63	подменять / подменивать	под-	е	–	–	–	0.00022	-я- prevails
64	подменяться / подмениваться	под-	е	–	–	+	0.0001014	-я- prevails
65	примерять / примеривать	при-	е	–	–	–	0.000085	-я- established
66	похваляться / похваливаться	по-	а	–	корневой	+	0.000088	-я- prevails
67	приготов- лять / приготавливать	при-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.00035	-я- prevails
68	приготовляться / приготавливаться	при-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.00044	-я- prevails
69	приспособляться/приспосабливаться	при-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.00029	-ива- established
70	приспособ- лять / приспосабливать	при-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.00011	-ива- established
71	промерять / промеривать	про-	е	–	–	–	0.0000055	-я- established
72	примеряться / примериваться	при-	е	–	–	+	0.00004	long-term competition
73	простужать / простуживать	про-	у	–	–	–	0.0000024	long-term competition
74	простужать- ся / простуживаться	про-	у	–	–	+	0.0000128	-а- established
75	раскалять / раскаливать	рас-	а	–	корневой	–	0.000008	-я- established
76	растравлять / растравливать	рас-	а	–	l-epent.	–	0.000031	-я- established
77	растравлять- ся / растравливаться	рас-	а	–	l-epent.	+	0.0000015	long-term competition
78	скоплять / скапливать	с-		о/а	l-epent.	–	0.000021	long-term competition
79	скопляться / скапливаться	с-		о/а	l-epent.	+	0.000187	-ива- established
80	срезать / срезывать	с-	е	–	–	–	0.00012	-а- established
81	сужать / суживать	с-	у	–	–	–	0.00015	-а- established
82	сужаться / суживаться	с-	у	–	–	+	0.00035	-а- established
83	узаконять / узаконивать	у-	о	–	–	–	0.0000151	-ива- established
84	умалять / умаливать	у-	а	–	корневой	–	0.0002	-я- established
85	урезать / урезывать	у-	е	–	–	–	0.000055	-а- established
86	ускорять / ускоривать	у-	о	–	–	–	0.0004	-я- established
87	ускоряться / ускориваться	у-	о	–	–	+	0.00016	-я- established

Source: completed by T.I. Galeev.

The results obtained from the corpus show that the linguistic conditions listed by I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, which we describe in 3-5, had a certain influence on the choice of suffix.

3. Root Vowel

According to the root vowel, verbs are divided into two groups: those with alternating root vowels o/a (nadlomlyat’sya / nadlamyvat’sya ‘to break’) and those without alternating root vowels e, o, a, u, s (e.g., vyrez(a/yva)t’ ‘to cut’, umal(ya/iva)t’ ‘to deminish’, osmysl(ya/iva)t’ ‘to understand’, otravl(ya/iva)t’ ‘to poison’, pereosmysl(ya/iva)t’ ‘to reconsider’, podmen(ya/iva)t’ ‘to substitute’, uzakon(ya/iva)t’ ‘to legalize’, uskor(ya/iva)t’sya ‘to accelerate’).

The authors found 62 pairs of verbs with different vowels e, u, y, as well as a, o without root alternation. These verbs always have the variant with the suffix -a/ya- as dominant. 25 pairs with alternating root vowels o/a tend to the suffix -iva/yva-.

Thus, the graphs with frequency dynamics compared to the morphological structure of the word show that alternating vowel (o/a) usually means the choice of the suffix -iva/yva-.

4. L-epeneticum

Some verbs have the inserted consonant L (before the suffix) in their forms. L-epeneticum is the sound [l] which appeared after the labial consonants before [j] in the Proto-Slavonic period. This happened according to the law of syllabic syngarmonism. Verbs with root L, such as vkrapl(ya/iva)t’sya ‘to be embedded’; vylepl(ya/iva)t’sya ‘to mold’; zagotavl(ya/iva)t’ ‘to keep’; izgotavl(ya/iva)t’sya ‘to be produced’, do not belong to this group.

L-epenteticum causes the transition to the suffix -yva/iva-. Paradigms without this phenomenon usually have variant -a/ya-. The results obtained in GBN demonstrate that in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century, the form -a/ya- is frequent, and the form -iva/yva- have low, even zero, frequency. However, at the end of the 20th century, the -iva/yva- form often prevails or becomes more frequent than the competing variant.

5. Prefix

To find out whether the frequency of verbs depends on a certain prefix, subgroups for each prefix were identified.

Different variants may prevail in homonymic verbs with different prefixes. Having analyzed the prefixes and having compared their presence with the “evolutionary” behavior of verbs, we came to some conclusions.

First, prefixes can influence the behavior of verbs and their competition. Thus, verbs with the prefix na- always change the norm and assert the variant with -iva/yva-.

Verbs with the prefix u- and s- always have a suffixal shift -iva/yva- → -a/ya: srez(a/yva)t’ ‘to cut off’; suzh(a/iva)t’ ‘to narrow’, umal(ya/iva-)’ ‘to demenish’, urez(a/yva-)t’ ‘to reduce’, uskor(ya/yva-)t’sya ‘to accelerate’ and their reflexive forms.

Verbs with the prefix pri- and pod- have a suffixal shift -a/ya- → -iva/yva- (Pod-: podgotovlyat’sya / podgotavlivat’sya ‘to be prepared’; podgotovlyat’ / podgotavlivat’ ‘to prepare’. Pri-: prisposoblyat’ / prosposablivat’ ‘to adapt’; prisposoblyat’sya / prisposablivat’sya ‘to get adapted’).

Other verbs with the same roots but different prefixes do not show these tendencies, or the tendencies are weaker.

Second, the prefix of a verb correlates with its frequency.

The prefix iz- is highly productive in the verb system, and verbs with this prefix are almost always the most frequent. The verb pairs izmeryat’ / izmerivat’ ‘to measure’, izgotavlivat’ / izgotovlyat’ ‘to make’, izgotovlyat’sya / izgotavlivat’sya ‘to be produced’ in turn occupy the first, third and fifth places in the frequency ranking. In these three pairs, the variant with the suffix -ya- always dominates.

Verbs with the prefixes pri-, s-, u-, pod- are highly frequent and productive.

Verbs with the prefixes vy-, i-, ras-, pere-, nad- are less frequent, and are often at the end of the ranking.

6. Postfix

We analyze thirty pairs of verbs with the postfix -sya, i.e. one third of all the verb pairs studied. For example, vylupl(ya/iva)t’sya ‘to hatch’, nadloml(ya/iva)t’sya ‘to break’, prostuzh(a/iva)t’sya ‘to catch cold’, rastravl(ya/iva)t’sya ‘to distress’.

Reflexivity does not affect the frequency of verbs and the result of the competition. Reflexive verbs have the same tendencies as their non-reflexive derivatives.

Conclusion

Having analyzed the graphs of word-form competition, we conclude that the choice of a particular suffix is influenced by a combination of linguistic factors such as stress + root vowel alternation, alternation of consonants at the junction of morphemes + phonosemantics. Combinations of these features determine the choice of suffix and possible semantic shades of redundant forms.

The prevalence of the verb in the language does not influence the outcome of the competition of variants with secondary imperfectives, but the chronological factor is also important. This is evidenced by the fact that in the 19th century variants with the suffix -a/ya- prevailed, the 20th century was characterized by the prevalence of forms with the suffix -yva/iva-, and the beginning of the 21st century in most cases saw a return to the -a/ya- form.

The semantic separation of competing variants, i.e. the appearance of different shades of meaning in two competing verbs, leads to the independent existence of two verb forms. Forms of the same paradigm with different combinability in frequency terms can behave independently of each other, as they cease to be competitors and actualize differential semes.

Thus, the obtained results demonstrate that such linguistic factors as root vowel, stress, sonant alternation, l-epenteticum, and verb prefixes have a certain influence on the preference of one of the variants in the redundant verb paradigm with secondary imperfectivization. The reasons listed above are related to the con­venience of pronunciation and euphony, which indicates a direct, though delayed in time, influence of oral speech on publicism and fiction, and, consequently, on the language system.

About the authors

Timur I. Galeev

Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University

Author for correspondence.
Email: tigaleev@kpfu.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7322-6225
SPIN-code: 2632-2071

Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language

2 Tatarstan St., Kazan, 420021, Russian Federation.

Vladimir V. Bochkarev

Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University

Email: vbochkarev@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8792-1491
SPIN-code: 2596-9131

Researcher at the Research Institute of Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence,

2 Tatarstan St., Kazan, 420021, Russian Federation.

Valery D. Solovyev

Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University

Email: maki.solovyev@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4692-2564
SPIN-code: 5791-3820

Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Professor of the Department of Applied and Experimental Linguistics

2 Tatarstan St., Kazan, 420021, Russian Federation.

References

Supplementary files