BORROWINGS IN THE TREATISES OF A. P. GANNIBAL ON GEOMETRY AND FORTIFICATION (1725–1726): TOWARDS A HISTORY OF INDECLINABLE ADJECTIVES IN RUSSIAN

A striking feature of the treatises of A. P. Gannibal (1696–1781) is the large number of Gallicisms in the author’s language, primarily in terminology. A significant portion of these borrowings consists of adjectives, the bulk of which are used indeclinably. The article discusses a number of functional features of indeclinable adjectives in Gannibal’s language: the presence in some cases of Russian declinable equivalents, attempts at morphological adaptation of some lexemes, cases of homonymy of indeclinable adjectives and nouns. The author prefers morphologically unadapted adjectives to their Russian equivalents and to the formation of declinable adjectives with a borrowed root. Apparently, this feature is associated with the terminological character of their use. In the field of fortification, borrowed terms are represented much more broadly than in the treatise on geometry, because basic geometric terminology already had a tradition of usage in Rus- sian due to the widespread dissemination of geometric knowledge in pre-Petrine Russia.

The language of Gannibal's treatises provides interesting evidence that the Russian language was ready for the emergence of the category of indeclinable adjectives in the first third of the 18th century. This possibility did not come to pass, apparently due to the change in linguistic taste in the second half of the 18th century. Indeclinable adjectives did not develop in Russian until the 20th century.