ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE MORPHOLOGICAL VARIANT: PYATIDESYAT’YU VS. PYAT’YUDESYAT’YU

There are numerous deviations in the forms of compound numerals in speech. Most users do not consider them incorrect: regularly used forms turn out to be diagnostic mistakes marking zones of grammatical instability and demonstrating tendencies in language development. In modern system the instrumental case of ‘large’ numbers (from ‘50’ pyat’desyat to ‘80’ vosem’desyat) and ‘large’ hundreds (from ‘500’ pyat’sot to ‘900’ devyat’sot) is used in two variants. The former — pyat’yudesyat’yu, pyat’yustami — complies with the fixed norm, where each component of the compound numeral is declined. The latter pyat’idesyat’yu, pyat’istami has a simplified genitive form, which is conditioned by the lexicalization of the form and becomes the stem of the composite numeral. A common stem is found in both compound numerals and numeral names (pyatidesyatiletnij). The records of the two rivaling forms go as far back as three centuries ago. The article deals with the history of unification from the XVIII century up to now (M. V. Lomonosov, A. A. Barsov, N. I. Grech, A. Kh. Vostokov, F. I. Buslaev, A. A. Shakhmatov, etc). A great number of unified stems testify that this form is becoming the norm of usage.