All Slavic: Pronominal possessive adjectives of masculine with -a ending

Encolpius

Encolpius

Senior Member
Hungarian
Hello, how do you create pronominal possessive adjectives form -a masclines in all Slavic languages? Thanks.

Czech: táta (daddy) --> tátův (-ův) - ův masculine (not: tátin)
Russian: дядя (uncle) --> дядин - ин feminine (not: дядев)
 
    • Україньский: тато (dady) --> татів .
    Русский: папа, тятя (dady) --> папин, тятин.
     
    Українська:
    татко (dady) --> татків.
    дядько (uncle) --> дя́дьків, дя́дин, дя́дьчий (діал. стри́їв, ву́йків).
     
    What's the point of mentioning Ukrainian "tatko" if it neither ends with -a nor belongs to the first declension?
     
    Encolpius said:
    Russian: дядя (uncle) --> дядин - ин feminine (not: дядев)
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    It should also be noted that the possessive suffixes -ov and -ev are not productive in spoken Russian anyway. You either use other variations of suffixes as in "отцовский" or just replace it with the genitive case.
     
    Macedonian

    There are only few masculine nouns ending on -a (судија (súdija, "judge"), кадија (kádija, "judge" archaic), владика (vládika, "bishop"), комита (kómita, "komitadji"), војвода (vójvoda, "voivode"), папа (pápa, "Pope") etc.) and their pronominal possessive adjectives are almost never used or they don't exist. For example, for the word владика (vládika) I guess it would be владиков (vládikov) or владичин (vládičin). The pronominal possessive adjective of Папа (Pápa) "Pope" is more often used, and it is папин (pápin).

    For the masculine given names ending on -a it would be:
    Aлјоша > Алјошин, Алјошев
    Никола > Николов, Николев
    Илија > Илиев, Илијов
    Благоја > Благоев, Благојов
    Ѓорѓија > Ѓорѓиев, Ѓорѓијов

    -ин, -ев, -ов (-in, -ev, -ov)
     
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    Eirwyn said:
    What's the point of mentioning Ukrainian "tatko" if it neither ends with -a nor belongs to the first declension?
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    Indeed. And doing that twice, to the top of it.
    Those few Ukrainian masculine nouns (mostly personal names) which end in -a use -yn suffix (from Old Russian -in) to produce possessive adjectives, e.g.:
    Микола - Миколин
     
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    In Polish we seldom use pronominal possessive adjectives, but they exist(ed) in our language - I remember my grandparents using such forms, e.g.
    Ela (Elisabeth, Betty) - Elczyn mąż (Betty's husband), or mama (mummy) - mamin kapelusz (mum's hat). We still have a compound noun maminsynek (mom's boy, sissy).
     
    Interesting pronominal possessive adjectives are becoming rare in Russian & Polish, I am not sure about Czech, but I think the situation might be similar.
    # Marco - You have not mentioned any a-masculine, does it mean there are no "a-masculines" in Polish at all?
     
    -ov is barely productive in Russian indeed (up to the extent when some people struggle to correctly produce a surname from a certain word or to deduce the etymon of a surname - since most native Russian surnames are, essentially, fossilized possessive adjectives). -in is fairly productive, though (even though its original paradigm of declension experienced some levelling with other adjectives - which was expected anyway, considering the general history of Russian adjectives). But even those adjectives are absent in formal registers of speech, which demand genitives or, where applicable, relative adjectives instead.
     
    Encolpius said:
    Interesting pronominal possessive adjectives are becoming rare in Russian & Polish, I am not sure about Czech, but I think the situation might be similar.
    # Marco - You have not mentioned any a-masculine, does it mean there are no "a-masculines" in Polish at all?
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    We have such nouns, though they are rather classified as belonging to "mixed declension", not "first declension" because of their different plural forms. And in contemporary Polish they rather don't form possessive adjectives: sędzia (judge) - ? (we say sędziowski which is rather a regular adjective), radca (counsellor)- ?, wojewoda - ? (in the past wojewodzin was possible), starosta - (an old form starościn, now obsolete) etc. And 'daddy' is tato, though kids say tata colloquially and there existed a possessive adjective tatów but now it is not used.
     
    In Slovak, independently on the final vowel, always -ov for masculines. E.g. hrdinov (< hrdina), sudcov (<sudca), krajčírov (>krajčír) , .... Štúrov (<Štúr), Churchillov (< Churchill), Bélov (< Béla), Caligulov (<Caligula) ....

    In some cases the genitive is used instead. E.g. "Mick Jaggerov syn" may sound a bit weird, so "Syn Micka Jaggera" is the preferred solution.
     
    Encolpius said:
    Interesting pronominal possessive adjectives are becoming rare in Russian & Polish, I am not sure about Czech, but I think the situation might be similar.
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    No, in Czech the use of the possessive adjectives is obligatory, at least in the case of persons (in the case of animals the possessive adjectives are rather rare, e.g. lišák (male fox) → lišákův ohon = tail of the [particular] male fox).

    for masc. nouns -ův (< uov < -óv): bratr → bratrův syn, bratrova žena, bratrovo slovo (syn bratra is considered a bad style);
    for fem. nouns -in: matka → matčin bratr, matčina sestra, matčino zrcadlo;

    Jdeme ulicí Koněva okolo divadla Smetany na nádraží Wilsona. (all names in genitive) :cross: o_O
    Jdeme Koněvovou ulicí okolo Smetanova divadla na Wilsonovo nádraží. :tick:
    but
    Jdeme ulicí maršála Koněva na náměstí I. P. Pavlova. (only genitives are possible) :tick:
    (although we mostly say ... Koněvkou na Pavlák)

    Smetana → Smetanovo divadlo, but opera Bedřicha Smetany (gen.);
    Bulsara → Bulsarův syn, but syn Farrokha Bulsary (gen.);

    Many Czech surnames are common feminine nouns:

    Smetana (cream) → Smetanova opera;
    Svoboda (freedom) → Svobodova armáda;
    Hrdlička (turtle-dove) → Hrdličkovo museum člověka, but hrdliččin hlas = dove's voice;
    Jedlička (fir tree) → Jedličkův ústav;
    Růžička (little rose) → Růžičkův statek;
    Liška (fox, vixen) → pension Liškův mlýn, not Liščin mlýn, but liščin ohon = tail of the [particular] vixen;
    Mrkvička (carrot), Kukačka (cuckoo), Slepička (hen);
    Konvička, Sklenička, Hubička;
    Láska, Fiala, Hruška, Rada, Skála, Škoda, Babka, ...;

    similarly Caligula (botička) → Caligulův kůň;

    First names (Czech or Russian):

    Saša (Alexandr) → Sašův bratr;
    Míša (Michal) → Míšova sestra;
    Honza (Jan) → Honzovo kolo;
    Aljoša → Aljošův otec;
    Volka → Volkův džin;
    Nikita → Nikitova matka Matrena (never Nikitina);
    but
    Saša (Alexandra) → Sašin bratr;
    Míša (Michaela) → Míšina matka;
    Nikita (La femme Nikita) → Nikitin kolega;

    Common masculine a-stem nouns:

    předseda (chairman, president) → předsedovo slovo;
    starosta (mayor) → starostův úřad;
    pianista (and other -ists) → pianistův debut;
    kolega → kolegův stůl;
    táta, děda → tátův, dědův;
    vladyka, vojvoda, satrapa → vladykův, vojvodův, satrapův;
    posera, poseroutka (a chicken shit, a sissy) → poseroutkův deník, but Deník malého poseroutky (= Diary of a Wimpy Kid);
    halama (oaf), kořala/ožrala (drunkard);
    and many others, predominantly in slang;
     
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    pastet89 said:
    It is also worth mentioning that in Bulgarian the usage of these kind of pronouns is almost non-existent (apart from family names) and should be avoided.
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    I don't agree. I think they're used fairly often in daily language. They don't sound elegant so they should be avoided in formal speech, but I do hear them on a regular basis.
     
    Sorry but I also have to strongly disagree.

    I am very surprised to what you say as we are both native speakers, but I am very confident though that the vast majority of Bulgarians would rather agree that these suffixes are not actively used at all. When I started learning other Slavic languages it was one of the first thing that caught my attention - they they are used actively there. It might be your local dialect or something, but in standard Bulgarian norm and the Sofia's dialect these are used only in family names, and, in super rare ocasions, which are not style-neutral and sound really bizarre. Especially the female -in suffix is so archaic that I am not sure if I have even heard it 10 times in my entire life. In "normal", style-neutral Bulgarian we would always use just the preposition "на" + the object. Колата на Иван, тетрадката на Мария. Ивановата кола sounds close to absurd to me, Мариината тетрадка in the best case would sound if I am listening to my grandmother or reading a book from the beginning of the XX century.

    Again, I respect your opinion and I don't want to go into a long dispute, but I am still super surprised by what you are saying and if there are other Bulgarians around I would be curious what do they think about this.
     
    Well, -in is indeed rare and more archaic, as well as female forms (при Марийкини for example is something old grandmas used to say), but something like Сашовата кола (to respect the thread which is about masculine names ending in -O) sounds okay to me. It's rather colloquial but not something strange to my ears, and I'm surprised this sounds unnatural to you.

    I'm sure it's not used in Sofia. They are allergic to any such inflections, including the vocative, but I think in my area (North Central to East), this is used fairly often. I also hope someone else gives their input.
     
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