CORPUS-BASED OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONFUSION OF GENITIVE AND LOCATIVE IN RUSSIAN NOUNS

 The paper describes the confusion of the genitive and of the locative in the plural of Russian nouns: v trinadcati predyduščix slučaev, iz mnogočislennyx publikacijax instead of v trinadcati predyduščix slučajax ‘in thirteen previous cases,’ iz mnogočislennyx publikacijax ‘from numerous publications.’ This confusion has been known since the 15th century, but it is still not accepted as grammatically correct in Standard Russian. It is especially likely in nouns after attributes (adjectives, pronouns, and numerals) that do not distinguish the genitive and the locative in the plural. The analysis of the data from Araneum Russicum Maius corpus shows that this confusion is partly due to phonological and morphological factors, namely the location of stress in genitive and locative plural and the presence of a non-zero ending in the genitive (if a noun has a non-zero unstressed ending in the genitive plural, the use of the incorrect form is more probable). However, there are some other factors favoring confusion. It is more likely in some syntactic constructions (u + attribute + locative instead of genitive ‘in X,’ v / o(b) odnom / každom / ljubom / nekotoryx iz + attribute + locative instead of genitive ‘in / about one / each / any / some of X’) and in formal style, where the genitive is substituted for the locative.