Present-day numerals in the aspect of language dynamics

Numerals play a very specific role in the grammaticalsystem of Slavonic languages forming a kind of lexical-grammatical category denoting number as acertain substance which forces the names of countable objects to be in genitive case. These wordsformed a separate part of speech not only due to their semantics but also due to the gradual decay ofthe nominal categories of number, gender and, as the modern speech practice indicates, the category ofdeclension.The peculiarities of modern word formation of cardinal numerals are revealed in the article usingthe material of 315 tests completed by school graduates entering Tomsk State University. One of thetasks in these tests was to form three different variants of various case-forms of three-digit numerals.One more task was to find sentences with grammatical mistakes. Some of these mistakes related tocase-forms of composite numerals.Correct answers for the first question made up the following percentage for different variants:74.5% (the genitive case of 257), 54.7% (the prepositional case of 675), and 31.6% (the instrumentalcase of 364). Correct answers for the second question made up 50%. These numbers indicate thedegree of decay of the numerals declension system. The irreversibility of the process of this decay wasalso proved by the fact that some graduates refused to complete this task, used the nominative formtwice or wrote other forms, mostly the genitive form, created wrong, artificial forms (shestisotstami,trehsotstami, dvuhsot sta, dvuhsotpyatdesyatogosemi, treh sot shesti desyatyu chetyrmyu, etc…)These forms are examined in the article from the point of historical retrospection, i.e. as arealization of ancient lexicalization of subordinating combinations with agreement or governmentrelations, the tendencies of these words to have double forms, making opposite forms of nominativeaccusativeand subjective cases. The influence of cardinal numerals of adjacent enumerable layers andother parts of speech, especially ordinal numerals, on the paradigm may be explained by the semanticrelation and the derivation character of these units.The present-day grammatical isolation of numerals is actualized in such phenomena as the reductionof the number of inflexion models and the tendency to oppose the forms of object (nominal andaccusative) and subject cases. Such dichotomy is regarded as a transition stage of the conversion ofcardinal numerals into unchangeable words: the loss of declensions in modern speech is a naturallanguage process initiated due to various reasons. Among these reasons is the subordination of numeralsforms to mathematical thought, the tendency to analytism that characterizes the language as a whole aswell as the peculiarity of the separation of the given word class from a group of parts of speech due to thedecay of nominal categories. We could also have mentioned the simplification of the structure of suchnumerals as shestdesyat, pyatsot, however, they still have lexical relations to numerals desyat and sto.

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