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[upthera44.livejournal.com]

There is a Russian grammar rule that I have trouble remembering because it seems particularly illogical. Please discuss the difference when using numbers with masculine adjective-noun combinations and feminine adjective-noun combinations. For example...

У меня два хороших друга.

У меня две хорошие газеты.

(note that in the second example, despite the use of the number 2, the "good newspapers" remains in nominative case, whereas in the first it is put in genitive because of the number). Spasibo

Comments

[oryx_and_crake]

It really may seem somewhat illogical but I will try to explain as I understand it. If it were not for the numerals, both groups would be in nominative. (They still are, in a sense, which I will explain later.) Compare у меня есть хороший друг, у меня есть хорошая газета. [by the way, don't omit есть here - you should in some other cases but not here.]
However, when numbers come in they require a genitive (два кого? друга, две чего? газеты). So the main "hero" here is the numeral, and it is in nominative (два; in the genitive it would have been двух). The rest is directed by the numeral. Why the difference in the endings (хороших друга/хорошие газеты) - I really cannot explain but probably it has something to do with one being animated and the other one not. But please note that it is equally acceptable to say У меня есть две хороших газеты.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Where did you find genitive here? Both pairs are in accusative!

[oryx_and_crake]

Wrong. It is "две чего", not "две что".

[oryx_and_crake]

if you are still in doubt, look at "пять газет".

[mooose.livejournal.com]

In fact, both pairs here are in the nominative. However, nouns that follow the numbers 2, 3 and 4 are in the genitive singular case.

This is from any of my Russian grammar books.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Right, I did a mistake here. But in Old Russian there was a special Dual number, which was used for 2-4 objects, and that's exactly what we're having here. Well, actually it just requires memorizing it. ^_^

[inoctiluci.livejournal.com]

But why is the adjective in genitive plural, while the noun is in genitive singular? We just covered this in class today, and the professor (native Russian speaker) didn't even have a good answer.

I understand пять хороших телевизоров, but not два хороших телевизора. Wouldn't it make more sense to be два хорошего телевизора?

[oryx_and_crake]

I think khathi gave a good answer to that. I can only say that a language is often illogical...

[oryx_and_crake]

P.S. Also please note that the numeral два is in a sense an exception - the way it directs other words can be tricky. If you take three or more, there would not be any visible difference between the two cases:
У меня есть три хороших друга (пять хороших друзей)
У меня есть три хороших газеты (пять хороших газет)

But in any case it would be very wrong to say that "друзья here is in genitive and газеты is in nominative". This is not so. The constructions are similar.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

That's because dual number has different declension paradigm, compared with plural, and here we just have it. Dual number generally merged with plural in modern language, and their most forms are identical, but there are still cases where it rears its head. ^_^

[upthera44.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of conflicting responses here, so I'm hoping to clarify things.

Oryx and Crake, in response to your post above, I've seen examples in Russian textbooks that involved all of the "genitive singular numerals" (2,3,4) for feminine adjective-noun combinations using what appears to be nominative plural, while with masculine adjective-noun combinations it used genitive plural adjective endings and genitive singular noun endings. This is consistent with Moooose's comment below from his textbook. For example,

У меня есть четыре хорошие книги

but

У меня есть четыре хороших друга

Perhaps this is a flexible rule as some people seem to be suggesting. Is it acceptable to use either У меня есть четыре хорошие книги or У меня есть четыре хороших книги? Or is this just a very common mistake?

[oryx_and_crake]

I don't see any conflict in the responses. Четыре хорошие книги and четыре хороших книги is equally acceptable.

[upthera44.livejournal.com]

Ok, thanks to everyone who responded.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Actually, it doesn't "remain" in nominative and there's no trace of genitive there. Actually, both noun-adjective pairs rightfully changes in accusative, it's just the fact that feminine dual (yes, this is a remains of dual number in Russian, which still sometoimes surfaces even in moderna language) accusative is formed the same way as genitive, while masculine dual accusative coincides with nominative.

[oryx_and_crake]

Wrong. Accusative answers to "кого, что" and genitive to "кого, чего". Два кого? друга, две чего? газеты. Numerals require nouns and pronouns to be in genitive.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Oops. Right, that's genitive. My mistake. But still the reason is the peculiarities of a dual number declension.

[oryx_and_crake]

dual number declension - yes, that's probably it (I never know the clever names for things in language; why oh why my parents did not send me to philology department 20 years ago!)

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Huh, me too. But i don;t actually like philology, it's the formal grammar what is most interesting for me here.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's not about nominative or genitive, but nouns etc are declined DIFFERENTLY in dual number. That's my point.

[mooose.livejournal.com]

From a non-native speaker here:

According to my textbooks, adjectives qualifying feminine nouns that follow 2, 3, 4 are in the nominative plural, as in your example:

У меня две хорошие газеты.

You would expect the genitive хороших, instead of хорошие. My suspicion (and this is just a personal inference) is that because газеты (and almost all feminine nouns in the genitive singular) is phonetically identical to the nominative plural газеты, native speakers start to use the adjective in the nominative plural.

That's also why you don't have this problem with masculine nouns and neuter nouns.

With neuter nouns, speakers would notice the difference in stress between the genitive singular and the nominative plural, so there's no confusion there.

[upthera44.livejournal.com]

see my above response to Oryx and Crake (it references your comment here)

[mooose.livejournal.com]

actually, my professor did say that it was ok to say things like:

У меня есть две / три / четыре хороших газеты.

but in her opinion, the more 'proper' way is to say:

У меня есть две / три / четыре хорошие газеты.

Now judging from blueskyfrog's comment below, it seems that there is some basis for my theory. Native speakers would be inclined towards the nominative хорошие if they're stressing the fact that they're looking at newspapers since they focus on the word газеты, which is the genitive singular but is identical in form to the nominative plural.

On the other hand, if they might (and I'm not suggesting that all native speakers do this) be more inclined towards the genitive хороших if they want to emphasize that they have two of them, since they focus on the number which requires a genitive to follow it.

Again, still a theory... but it helps me remember the rule.

[ex-blueskyfr438.livejournal.com]

Hm, as a native speaker, I wouldn't mind saying У меня две хороших газеты, there's nothing wrong about it, the difference's probably that when you're saying хорошие you stress the fact you have those newspapers, and with хороших you emphasize you have two of them.