Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

Russian feminitive formation comes in two varieties: the feminitive suffix can be added to the masculine stem (e.g., artist/artistka ‘performer.M/F’) or the masculine and the feminine nouns can bear equipollent marking (e.g., aktʲor/aktrisa ‘actor/actress’). Strikingly, the same holds for nouns derived with native Russian suffixes and may involve the same productive feminitive suffix (e.g., učítelʲ/učítelʲnica ‘teacher.M/F’ vs. provodnik/provodnica ‘conductor.M/F’).

I will examine the two types of feminitive formation in the context of complex affix formation and argue that the affixal complex ‑nic‑ should synchronically involve the adjective-forming suffix ‑ĭn‑ and the diminutive/feminitive suffix ‑ic‑ in more than one mode of composition.