The goal of this study is to analyze the syntactic relationships in a growing number of noun phrases in modern Russian which appear to be aberrant by virtue of non-agreement between the elements. Scholars and grammarians have commented on this and other instances of non-agreement which are at times referred to as analytic tendencies. However, there is far from universal agreement as to the extent to which modern Russian is exhibiting truly analytic features.
Virtually all commentary on the instances of non-agreement is descriptive and lacks interpretation. The goal of this study is to provide insight into the structural implications of the rapidly growing category of indeclinable adjectives. Further, the study will examine the recent emergence of a new class of word forms which serve both nominal and adjectival functions. It will be demonstrated that these word forms (nominal adjectives) represent a significant step towards analyticity in modern Russian. Of significance is that in the nominal function these word forms exhibit declination patterns consistent with Russian morphology. However, it will be demonstrated that, while clearly serving an adjectival function, these forms are invariant.
The research will include a broad discussion of analytic structures in modern Russian, e.g., indeclinable nouns, adjectives, clips, acronyms, nouns in apposition, and the gradual loss of non-prepositional valencies. The investigation will briefly discuss the history of these elements and the possible relationship between them and the influx of analytic noun phrase constructions which has marked the last decade. While the study will focus primarily on adjective-noun non-agreement, speculation will also be offered as to how other previously existing constructions may have facilitated the rise of the former in the grammatical system. Samples will be collected from current lexicons, mass media sources and publications in the spheres which exhibit the greatest productivity of the constructions in question, i.e., business, technology, and popular culture. A diverse group of native Muscovites will be used to provide an assessment of the current attitudes regarding these constructions and the extent to which these analytic features have been integrated into the grammar of modern Russian.