The formation of concrete nouns with productive suffixes in the Novgorod birch bark letters of the 11th- 14th centuries

This article is devoted to one of the most complex and insufficiently researched areas of modern Russian studies, and raises the issue of clarifying the specific suffixal word-formation of nouns with a particular meaning in the old Novgorod birch bark letters that reflect the natural spoken language, which stands out among other studies covering word-formation of nouns and verbs mainly in the book-written language of this period. The article describes the derivational features of concrete-subject nouns with productive suffixes that are identified in the Novgorod birch bark letters of the 11th-14th centuries. The focus is on the determination of semantics and of morphological features of producing words in comparison with the derivatives and the problem of identifying common features of each word-formation model. The analysis is accompanied by specification of the lexical meanings of individual words of the Old Novgorod dialect. The analysis identifies some individual characteristics of word formation in this group of words functioning in the Old Novgorod dialect. For example, word derivation of some nouns, in addition to the traditional grammar laws, required additional, perhaps decisive, lexical trends and techniques; so the formation of nouns with a concrete-subject non-modification meaning of suffixal formants can be regarded as metaphorically mediated lexicalization. Individual derivatives could form a special type of word-formation that occurs in case of lexical-semantic similarity of derivatives, form and sound identity of the final part of producing words, but their possible grammatical difference; such a model of word formation can be referred to as the "formal-semantic derivational type". All identified derivative suffixal nouns with a concrete meaning have derivational bases, different from the point of view of morphological relatedness and semantics. Derivational bases are noun and verbal stems. Derivatives themselves are of masculine, neuter and feminine gender. Among the most frequent derivatives is the modification meaning of diminutiveness and that of specific objectivity developed on its basis, without subjective evaluation. When word derivation is of verbal nature, the lexical-grammatical identity of derivational bases is observed. Some derivative nouns are treated as conventionally derived from the difficulty and sometimes impossibility of an accurate reconstruction of the form of derivational bases.

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