дружный - дружественный - дружеский

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

Dear Community,

Could you please help clarify the shades of meaning of the following words?

1. дружный

2. дружественный

3. дружеский

On a deeper level, one is interested in determining the nuances of the various adjective endings
highlighted in green above.

In the above instance, what nouns, for example, would one typically collocate with each of the given adjectives?

Thank you in advance for your kind input.

ФБ

Comments

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Дружный = amicable, harmonious (дружная семья - a family where all members live in piece and friendship with each other.)
Another meaning is rather figurative: раздался дружный смех ~~ all of them laughed simultaneously.

Дружественный = friendly, in terms of inter-social relationships, mostly describing status rather than the quality of relationships: дружественная страна = friendly country, ally country (a country that declares and practices friendship with your country.)

Дружеский = just plain friendly, in terms of interpersonal relationships; more a quality of somebody's doings than just status; suitable between close friends: дружеский совет - a friend's advice, дружеское участие - friendly sympathy, sympathy between frends.

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

Thanks, is there anything inherent in the adjective endings that suggests, for example:

1. ...ный - Inherent qualitative characteristic (Essence/Being)

2. ...ественный - Superficial/Artificial characteristic (Circumstance)

3. ...еский - Inherent qualitative characteristic (Essence/Action)

Speaking here only of the adjective endings themselves, divorced from any particular context.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

No. Don't go too broad, suffixes (we speak suffixes here, not endings) often really do add meaning that suggests differences in characteristcs, but not this broad (or, I'd say, not this exact.)

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

By that same token, one should not think in unnecessarily restrictive terms. Case is point, a suffix is an ending.

So, how broad can one go is the question here?

A simple "no", not very helpful. One needs to engage in a discussion and present examples to support one's point of view or refute that of one's interlocutor.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>a suffix is an ending

No way, not in Russian grammar. See how it works

друж[stem]еств[1st suffix]енн[2nd suffix]ый[ending]

Of all those, only the ending indicates the case:

друж[stem]еств[1st suffix]енн[2nd suffix]ый[ending] -- infinitive
друж[stem]еств[1st suffix]енн[2nd suffix]ого[ending] -- genitive
друж[stem]еств[1st suffix]енн[2nd suffix]ому[ending] -- dative
друж[stem]еств[1st suffix]енн[2nd suffix]ого[ending] -- accusative
друж[stem]еств[1st suffix]енн[2nd suffix]ым[ending] -- instrumental
о друж[stem]еств[1st suffix]енн[2nd suffix]ом[ending] -- prepositional

The role of suffixes is different.

For example, -еств- (or -ество) is the suffix that add the following characteristics to the meaning:

1. (nouns) an abstract category derived from the initial noun or adjective's stem: могущество (the might), изящество (elegance, grace), крепостничество (feudal social system), супружество (married life)
2. (nouns) unions, communities, associations: землячество (an association of fellows born in the same region, city, country; fellow-countrymanship), сообщество (community), общество (society)
3. (nouns) people or creature who have the characteristics defined by the initial noun or adjective's stem: божество (deity), [ваше] величество ([your] majesty), [ваше] святейшество ([your] holiness).
4. (adjectives) -- all three meanings mentioned above, regarded as qualities, always with the addition of adjective-creating suffix -енн-:
могущественный - mighty;
общественный - social, communal;
божественный - god-like, divine;
величественный - majestic

Note that not all nouns with the suffix -еств- can create adjectives with the addition of the 2nd suffix -енн-: there is no words like изящественный (it's simply изящный) or святейшественный (it's simply святейший). Every such case should be checked with a dictionary.

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

In the English language the term "suffix" is a subset of the term "ending":

"suffix - an affix occurring at the end of a word, base, or phrase -- compare PREFIX". Source: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/suffix

Obviously, you have a very restrictive and particular understanding of the term. But that is beside the point. At least we now know what you mean when you speak of "suffix".

So, can we get back to the original point at hand, which is to attempt to differentiate and categorise the shades of meanings attached to the adjective forms?

1. -ный

2. -ественный

3. -еский

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

One must study the theory of Russian grammar first. It is not "me" having "a very restrictive and particular understanding of the term". It is the theory of Russian grammar doing that. As there is no such thing as a case indicating ending (inflectional morphemes) in English, of course the concept of the difference between suffixes and endings (inflectional morphemes), common in the Russian grammar theory, must sound foreign for an English speaker. But this does not mean that there is no such difference, it's only that one has never heard about this difference before.
If you are advanced enough, read this (http://www.portal-slovo.ru/rus/philology/russian/588/1851/), especially these parts: "Словообразующие морфемы: приставка, суффикс, постфикс," "Формообразующие морфемы (флексии)" and "Окончание." In brief, Russian morphemes are:
- Stems (корни)
- Bound morphemes, or affixes (аффиксы), divided into prefixes, suffixes and postfixes;
- Inflectional morphemes (флексии и окончания), of whose окончание is just one class.

P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Concerning this:
1. -ный

2. -ественный

3. -еский
are TWO or even THREE morphemes in each case, each morpheme giving different shade of meaning and/or playing a different grammatical role:
1. -н-ый

2. -еств-енн-ый

3. -е-ский, or ...e-ск-ий, or ...eс-кий,depending on a particular stem.

I'm just amused.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

He's trying to help you with grammar, and you are arguing with him...and over the different meanings of the word "friendly"! Is the irony apparent to anyone else here?

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I'm interested to know your source for the "-estvo" suffix - it looks like good reading.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It's Rulib.Info (http://www.rulib.info/word/-estv-_o.html) dictionary.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

When speaking of Russian grammar, a suffix is a derivational morpheme and an ending is an inflectional morpheme. These terms are not to be used interchangeably.

Some suffixes do have a particular meaning. Not all of them. Sometimes the meaning is simply "deverbative". -н- builds adjectives which have both relational and qualitative meaning.
Get Townsend's "Russian Word Formation" which is a great source for this.

[belaja-belka.livejournal.com]

Разрешите высказать свое восхищение. Впрочем, это ведь Ваша специальность, чему я удивляюсь...
И все равно здорово :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

1. Please note that the working language of this community is English ;-))
2. This is not in what I'm specializing, I'm not a linguist, I'm a mass media editor. It's not my job to know all that, it's just 12 years of practice in googling things up :)))))

[belaja-belka.livejournal.com]

1. Excuse me, sir, I just didn't consider this as a work question :)) I'll try to straighten.
2. The more deep becomes my respect :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Come on, even a rabbit can be taught to burn matches, if you train it long enough.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This does look like a lot of fun.

[belaja-belka.livejournal.com]

...if you grain it long enough.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

...or drain it long enough...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

There you are. I just didn't know any suitable English source. Thanks for that.

[belaja-belka.livejournal.com]

If you drain it long enough, you can use it instead of the matches.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Training grained rabbits to light matches made of drained rabbits matches my brain like a strained stray train.

[marta-mb.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting question about 'friendly' etc. I can't help getting involved if it's about suffixes :-)
So, with regard to Russian, the easiest way to distinguish suffixes and endings is this: if you add something to a stem and have a new word, the thing you added is most often a suffix. If you add something to the stem and get another form of the same word, the thing you changed/added is an ending. So suffixes are basically about making new words, and endings are about changing the same word. There are some many cases, though, when the same element combines the features of the suffix and the ending, e.g. zhen-a 'woman, wife' where -a is the ending of nom. sg. fem. and a suffix (used to form designations of females). The same case is lis m. 'fox' - lisa f. 'vixen'.
Earlier there used to be a tendency in German, English and Swedish terminology and in school grammars to call endings everything that is added to the stem, which makes things easy for non-linguists.

[belaja-belka.livejournal.com]

wow...

[spiritrc.livejournal.com]

Well, I think you actually speak about different concepts. You speak about grammatical elements, in which case "ending" is translated as "окончание" and is no way a part of a suffix, while freiburg234 speaks about parts of a word as a byte-string, in which case there is a "beginning" (начало) and "ending" (конец, окончание in a non-grammatical sense, хвост, whatever else). In that case "ending" may well include anything after the prefix (being the "beginning"). :)

That's why he says you have a restrictive understanding. :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Russian grammar (or studying any other language more difficult than English, to be exact:)) IS restrictive and precise. If you are looking for a liberal, lazy, broad-understanding way of studying something, like you lie flat on your sofa while bits of knowledge subconciounsly slip into your brain -- then studyng Russian is definitely not your cup of tea. Well, behind the "moya tvoya ne ponimay" limits.