Russian (Indo-European, Slavonic)

Summary: The pronouns nekto 'somebody' and nečto 'something' have only nominative(-accusative) forms.

The Russian indefinite pronouns nékto ‘somebody, a certain’ and néčto ‘something’ each have only one form: nékto has only a nominative:

while néčto has only a nominative/accusative:

There is nothing obvious about the function of these words that would explain this restriction; other semantically overlapping words ¹ have complete case paradigms (and note that néčto ‘something’ can be used in the accusative, but nékto ‘someone’ not). Equally, this restriction is surprising from a morphological point of view. The words are transparently composed of a prefix ne- plus the interrogative pronoun kto ‘who’ and čto ‘what’,² and these interrogative pronouns by themselves do decline.

However, an apparent morphological correlation does emerge when we look at the paradigms of another pair of lexemes, the negative pronouns nékogo ‘there is nobody’ and néčego ‘there is nothing’. These are likewise composed of ne- plus interrogative pronoun, but have no nominative (note that the genitive is conventionally used as the citation form). Thus paradigms of the two pairs of lexemes -- indefinite pronouns on the one hand and negative pronouns on the other -- are at first glance nearly complementary, overlapping only in the inanimate accusative; and as shown below, this overlap is only apparent.

As outlined below, the restrictions on the paradigm of the negative pronouns are syntactically motivated, so it is the defectiveness of the indefinite pronouns that wants explaining. Zaliznjak (1973: 84, fn 34) suggests homophony avoidance, i.e. expansion of the paradigm is blocked because the cells in the expected morphological paradigm are already occupied by forms of nékogo and néčego. While one hand there is no evidence that this is a synchronically active constraint, there are reasons to think that the current state of affairs is the result of historical developments that were themselves motivated by avoidance of homophony, at least in part. The story is a rather complicated one.

Morphosyntax of nékogo/néčego

The morphosyntax of the negative pronouns nékogo and néčego is such that they are excluded from the nominative entirely, and also from the inanimate accusative in most contexts.

The lack of a nominative comes from the fact that they are used in subjectless sentences in conjunction with the copula (which is null in the present tense, and takes default 3sg neuter agreement elsewhere) plus an infinitive.³

Being subjectless, this construction precludes the use of the nominative; hence the fact that the negative pronouns nékogo and néčego lack nominative forms is explicable from their syntax. Agents may be expressed in the dative, as is usual with infinitives.

The restrictions on the inanimate accusative are twofold. First, by a general rule, direct objects whose existence is negated outright (which certainly applies to these negative pronouns) take the genitive rather than accusative.⁴ Thus the only context where we might expect to find the accusative is when governed by a preposition that takes the accusative. This does occur, but here a second peculiarity comes into play. As noted above, with nékogo and néčego prefixes are positioned after the prefix ne-.⁵ Thus the accusative of the negative pronoun néčto always takes the form of ne+preposition+čto. By contrast, the indefinite pronoun néčto is an indivisible whole. These facts are illustrated below with the preposition čerez ‘through’, which takes the accusative:

Consequently, there is no overlap between the forms of the indefinite pronouns nékto and néčto on the one hand, and those of the negative pronouns nékogo and néčego on the other.

Diachrony

Earlier texts show that the indefinite pronouns nékto and néčto used to have non-nominative forms, as in the following example, where the verb iskat′ ‘look for’ takes a genitive object:

On this basis we might propose that these forms were lost over time; in particular, that they were driven out in order to avoid homophony with the negative pronouns nékogo/néčego. This is probably the wrong way of looking at it. The indefinite pronouns are in fact borrowed lexemes, and I will suggest that homophony avoidance did indeed play a role, specifically, as a constraint on borrowing. To make this clear, some background on the history of Russian is in order.

The confrontation of the indefinite and negative pronouns is ultimately an aspect of the confrontation between the two constituent strains of literary Russian, Church Slavonic versus the vernacular. The history of the literary language starts around the tenth century with the adoption of a literary idiom, Church Slavonic, itself originally based on a variety of Balkan Slavonic (presumably that spoken around Thessalonica). Although the differentiation of the various Slavonic languages from each other was at this point still in its early stages, Church Slavonic and vernacular Russian will nonetheless differed in a number of important points. The subsequent history of the Russian literary language involves a continual interplay between the two, with influences going in both directions. The literary language as finally codified in the 18th century is something of a hybrid, vernacular Russian with countless Church Slavonic elements incorporated into it.

In the case at hand, the indefinite pronouns nékto and néčto were originally Church Slavonic, while the negative pronouns nékogo and néčego were vernacular Russian. The indefinite pronouns form part of a small class of wh-words with the Church Slavonic prefix ne- ‘some…’ (homophonous with the ordinary sentence negator ne ‘not),⁶ e.g. kotóryj ‘who/which (relative pronoun)’ ~ nékotoryj ‘some, certain’; kogdá ‘when’ ~ nékogda ‘sometime’. In Church Slavonic, nékto and néčto were fully inflected. However, there is no evidence that their oblique forms were ever successfully incorporated into anything that might be described as literary Russian.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons it is difficult to offer much in the way of really solid evidence that this was really the case. First, the fluidity of the relationship between Church Slavonic and the vernacular means that one can never be too certain about identifying a given text as representing the donor or recipient idiom, especially in earlier periods. In the case of néčto, the evidence provided by Unbegaun (1935: 386) and Cocron (1962: 173) suggest that it entered the vernacular-based written norm in the 17th century (they do not discuss the possibility of oblique forms). The 18th c. texts in the RNC and the Russkaja virtual ′naja biblioteka (Russian Virtual Library) yield a grand total of one example of an oblique form. Examples such as that from Zadig above are vanishingly rare. All this is congruent with the notion that the emergent modern literary standard simply by-passed the oblique forms.

The adjective nekij

In the case of nékto, the Dictionary of XVIII century Russian reports that it had only a nominative form, which would seem to leave us nothing to work with. However, there is another lexeme, the adjective nékij ‘(a) certain’, some of whose forms may correspond to the expected oblique forms of nékto.⁷ It turns out we can fruitfully use nékij as a morphological surrogate for investigating the history of nékto, for which some explanation of its morphological peculiarities are necessary. Nékij is an adjective, and like all adjectives has a large paradigm, with distinct gender and number forms. What interests us is the behaviour of the oblique forms. As adopted from Church Slavonic, it had a quite unusual paradigm. While a normal Russian adjective has a single invariant stem, nékij had three: nék- for the nominative/accusative, and néko- and néki- for the oblique cases.

Unsurprisingly, the tendency over time has been to adapt the paradigm of nékij to that of a normal adjective, eliminating the alternation in favour of a single invariant stem, based on the nominative/accusative. One consequence of levelling out the stem alternation is that some of these forms (the dative, genitive and locative of the masculine/neuter singular) should end up identical to the corresponding but missing forms of nékto. Now if it is true that the oblique forms of nékto were rejected due to homophony with nékogo, we should equally expect stem levelling of nékij to have been rejected where homophony nékogo would have resulted. And this appears to be not only what happened, but what continues to happen, judging by the data from the Russian National Corpus, which contains texts from 1700 on (see also Graudina et al. 1976: 250). Paradigm levelling involves the elimination of the two oblique stem alternants, néko- and néki-. According to the degree to which this has happened, the paradigm can be divided into three chunks. ‘C’ corresponds simply to néki-, while ‘A’ and ‘B’ correspond to néko-: ‘A’ where levelling would not bring about homophony with nékogo, and ‘B’ where it would. Table 1 below shows the developments over the last three centuries. Levelling of néki- (‘C’) was already well under way in the 18th century, and by the late 20th century it has disappeared completely. The behaviour of the stem néko- differs sharply according to its potential for homophony with nékogo. Where there is no danger of homophony (‘A’), levelling continues over time, till by the beginning of the 21st century the innovative non-alternating stem accounts for more than 60% of the tokens. Where homophony is involved (‘B’), levelling has been resisted, so that in the beginning of the 21st century levelled forms still account for only around 10% of the tokens (‘B’ in Table 1).

Thus, although the historical record does not tell us exactly what happened to the oblique forms of nékto, the behaviour of nékij strongly suggests that there is something about the forms themselves that speakers reject. And while there is no direct evidence that homophony avoidance is responsible, nothing else plausibly correlates with the distinction between ‘A’ and ‘B’ forms seen in Table 1 (with the reservation that, in practice, homophony in the locative would never occur, since a preposition here is obligatory, thus o nékom… ‘about a certain …’ versus ne o kom ‘there’s nobody about whom’.) This provides indirect evidence that homophony avoidance determined which forms of the indefinite pronouns nékto and néčto were actually borrowed into Russian from Church Slavonic.

Notes

¹ Such as któ-to/čtó-to ‘someone/something (specific)’, kto-nibúd′/čto-nibúd′ ‘someone/something (non-specific)’.

² With the reservation that čto ‘what’ is pronounced [ʃ]to, while néčto ‘something’ is ne[tʃ]to. This distinction has a historical basis, the [tʃ] pronunciation being characteristic of Church Slavonic.

³ And as such they are not to be confused with the negative pronouns niktó ‘nobody’ and ničegó ‘nothing’, which are used in finite clauses.

⁴ Meanwhile, the accusative of animate pronouns is always identical to the genitive.

⁵ Originally, this construction involved a negated copula used in conjunction with the interrogative pronoun (used as a free relative):

The reattachment of the negator ne- to the pronoun was probably a result of the reduction of the present tense copula to null. The contemporary behaviour w.r.t. pronouns is a trace of this older state of affairs.

⁶Ultimately, the two are related, with the indefinite derived from the negative by lengthening of the vowel (Trubačev 1997: 92f). The Church Slavonic reflex of the originally lengthened vowel was represented by a distinct grapheme ě , thus ně ‘some’ versus ne ‘not’. In Russian the two have merged, with a purely graphic distinction maintained until the spelling reforms of the early 20th century eliminated ě. Note that prior to the standardization of spelling in the 18th century the distinction was inconsistent (e.g. see fn. 5 with ně for expected ne). Note also that Church Slavonic lacked the negative pronouns nékogo and néčego (having retained the older construction illustrated in fn. 5), so the homophonic clash under discussion would not have arisen.

⁷ Alongside from this formal overlap, there is a functional one as well, which contributes to the murkiness of the history of nékto. In the contemporary language their functions with animate referents are distributed as follows:

Thus, when modifying a name, nékto and nékij are equivalent, but otherwise their functions diverge; in particular, nékto may function as an independent pronoun, while nékij is always an attributive modifier. But in Church Slavonic their functions were not clearly segregated. As a consequence, examples of forms such as nékogo, nékom, nékomu in older texts are ambiguous: should they be construed as forms of nékto or of nékij? Thus, pace the Dictionary of XVIII c. Russian, it is probably impossible to say whether or not nékto completely lacked oblique forms in the 18th century (though the evidence of néčto suggests that it did indeed lack these forms).

References

Cocron, Friedrich. 1962. La langue russe dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Inst. d'Études Slaves.

Dictionary of XVIII c. Russian = 2004. Slovar′ russkogo jazyka XVIII veka (vol. 14). Saint Petersburg: Nauka.

Graudina, L. K., Ickovič, V. A, Katlinskaja, L. P. 1976 . Grammatičeskaja pravil´nost´russkoj reči. Opyt častotno-stilističeskogo slovarja variantov. Moscow: Nauka.

RNC: Russian National Corpus. http://www.ruscorpora.ru/. (Accessed 10/2008.)

Russkaja virtual′naja biblioteka [Russian virtual library]. (Includes a collection of major 18th c. texts.) http://www.rvb.ru/. (Accessed 10/2008.)

Trubačev, Oleg N. (ed.). 1997. Ètimologičeskij slovar′ slavjanskix jazykov (volume 24). Moscow: Nauka.

Unbegaun, Boris. 1935. La langue russe au XVIe siècle (1500-1550). Paris: Inst. d’Études Slaves.

Zaliznjak, Аndrej А. 1973 [2002]. O ponimanii termina ‘padež’ v lingvističeskix opisanijax. In: Russkoe imennoe slovoizmenenie. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul´tury. 613-647 (originally in: Andrej A. Zaliznjak (ed.) Problemy grammatičeskogo modelirovanija. Moscow: Nauka. 53-87).