On History of Certain Indeclinable Nouns of Foreign Origin

Kazan National Research Technical University named after A. N. Tupolev, Kazan, Russia

^* Corresponding author: shisholina@mail.ru

Abstract

It is well known that borrowing is one of the most important universal sources of vocabulary replenishment of any language. The present work is a study of the indeclinable nouns, a special group of borrowings that to some extent contribute to the change of the grammatical structure of the Russian language in general, and the declension system in particular. The article describes the history of the emergence and reception in the system of the Russian language of certain indeclinable nouns of foreign origin. We studied the ways of the language units recorded in the lexicographic sources of the XVIII century. The reception of the prototypes of the studied units is reviewed in terms of the phonetic and graphic formalization of the word, the acquisition of its morphological characteristics, and the formation of its semantic structure. Due to the strong foreign language influence and multiple language contacts, the Russian language of the XVIII century is characterized by a high variability of the foreign language nouns, including the indeclinable nouns, often with the declinable doublets. The language can fix a declinable, as well as an indeclinable form.