Quantitative Analysis of Suffix Variability of Comparative Adjectives in Russian

摘要

There are two variants of the productive suffix of comparative adjectives used in modern Russian. They are a full two-syllable form and a reduced one-syllable suffix. Both variants are normative. However, they are slightly different in terms of stylistics. The suffix -ee makes the word sound neutral and the word with the suffix -ei sounds more colloquial. The article presents a quantitative study of variability of the suffixes of comparative adjectives and analyzes linguistic and extralinguistic factors that influence the frequency of the variants. The authors concluded that there is no previously anticipated influence of phonetic and morphological factors on the choice of the suffix of an adjective in a bookish speech.