Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15291/csi.4812
Genitive Plural as a Lexicographic Problem: the Example of Croatian Nouns of the e-Declension Ending in a Consonant Cluster
Jurica Polančec
orcid.org/0000-0002-8454-8844
; Old Slavonic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
Maša Musulin
; Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, Zagreb Croatia
Tomislava Bošnjak Botica
; Institute for Croatian Language, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper analyses dictionary descriptions of the genitive
plural forms of feminine nouns of the e-declension with a
stem-final consonant cluster. The analysis is based on four
monolingual dictionaries of the contemporary Croatian
language. In genitive plural, these nouns are overabundant
and may have the formatives -ā, -ī (crkvā, crkvī ‘church’),
or the formative -ā with the epenthetic ā inserted into the
stem final consonant cluster (crkāvā). Based on an analysis
of approximately 300 most common nouns of this type, we
have shown similarities and differences within and between
dictionaries in the ways the overabundant forms are attested
and presented. The analysis has also shown that the dictionaries
are similar in that they list variant forms relatively systematically
and in a manner that is in line with the grammatical
rules of standard language. This concerns both the choice
of combinations of endings (the ending -ī is never given as
the only ending), as well as the order of variant forms (the
ending -ī is never listed as the first one). It has also been
shown that the dictionaries systematically list forms in -ī for
most nouns and that in the dictionaries there exists a stable
core of nouns that use the formative -ā-ā. Dictionaries,
however, differ in some details. This concerns, for example,
the triple forms, with some dictionaries systematically citing
such forms (crkāvā, crkvā, crkvī), whereas others only
list the first and third forms (crkāvā, crkvī) while avoiding
the second one (crkvā). The greatest dispersion in presentation
is found with the ending -ā without epenthesis, which is
most likely a consequence of its decreasing share in actual
use with this subtype of feminine nouns. The paper also provides
a comparison with the corpus data from the Riznica
and hrWaC corpora (subcorpus forum.hr). This has shown
that multiple forms are less commonly attested there than
in the dictionaries, with the presence of the ending -ī being
even more pronounced in corpora, while the core of nouns
with the formative -ā-ā is somewhat reduced, but still stable.
Keywords
overabundance; genitive plural; Croatian language; dictionaries; corpora
Hrčak ID:
334065
URI
Publication date:
25.7.2025.
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