What does the word "bottom" sound like in the genitive plural?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

With this word, not everything is so simple.

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What is the genitive plural of the noun "bottom"?

Natasha Zinovchenko

First, let's deal with the nominative plural. Many people think that the plural “bottom” is the “bottoms”. But no, “bottom” is the plural of “bottom”, and “bottom” has a completely different form - “bottom”.

Accordingly, in the plural "bottom" declines as follows:

dona,
bottoms,
donyam,
dona,
donami,
donyah.

Similarly, the plural forms of the word "shilo" are formed: yes, in the plural it is "shilya".

It seems that these are very unusual shapes, but in fact, we have long been accustomed to them. Nobody has any questions about the form "feather - feathers", "link - links", "wing - wings". There is also "log - logs", "tree - trees". These are all neuter words, but the forms of some masculine words are also formed: "leaf - leaves", "stake - stakes", "twig - twigs", "scab - scabs", "stone - stones", "root - roots "," brother - brothers "," prince - princes ".

Where did these forms come from? Now let's figure it out, but first let's understand where the "o" in the word "dona" came from.

This word comes from the Old Russian "dno". Initially, it had a reduced vowel, which was designated by the letter "ъ".

Reduced vowels are super short vowels. They existed in the Old Russian language and were designated by the letters "b" and "b". But over time, the language changed, these sounds were lost. In some positions they turned into "o" and "e", and in some they simply disappeared. That is why fluent vowels have appeared in many words: in some positions they are, and in some they are not, because historically in all positions there were reduced ones.

In Russian, in many words, when the plural forms are formed, the stress goes from the ending to the root: "window - window", "wine - wine", "spot - spot". In the word "bottom" the stress also passes from the ending to the root, and the historical reduced sound under stress passes into "o".

But then why not dona, but dona? And why not “wings” and “feathers”, but “wings” and “feathers”?

In the Old Russian language there were 6 declensions, which included 14 inflectional classes. Gradually, the system changed, as a result we have modern 3 declensions. During this restructuring, many words changed the endings of the case forms, and rather complex processes took place in the language.

To continue, you need to remember what collective nouns are. These are nouns, the singular form of which denotes a collection of persons, identical, homogeneous or similar objects as one indivisible whole. For example, the words "hooliganism" and "crow". That is, they are singular forms that denote a plurality.

In the Old Russian language, the category of collectiveness did not grammatically coincide with the concept of collectiveness in the modern language. Collective nouns were formed with the help of "-ie": "tree", "leaf", "perier". They had plural forms: "trees", "leaves", "peria". In modern language, plural forms of collective nouns are impossible.

When the declension system was restructured, some plural forms of collective nouns of the neuter gender became plural forms of non-collective nouns of the neuter and masculine gender. And "-ya" eventually turned into "-ya". That is, collectives have ceased to be collective, but have become plural forms. In modern language, in some cases, two forms have survived, which differ in meaning: “leaves / leaves”, “stones / stones”, “teeth / teeth”, “rods / rods”.

It is difficult for me to imagine a situation in which "dona" and "awl" would be perceived as collective. However, it is obvious that these words in the plural at some point began to change exactly according to the type described above. Why is a mystery, like much in the history of the Russian language.