To inflect, or not to inflect, that is the question

An experimental study of indeclinability in Russian

Abstract

We present two experiments in which Russian speakers used nonce nouns ending in -a, -o, -e, -i and -u, producing a form or selecting it from a list. Most forms from -a stimuli were inflected, as expected. We also received many inflected answers for other stimuli, although real -i/u nouns are always indeclinable, as well as new loanwords ending in -o/e. Notably, the majority of inflected instrumental singular forms from -i/u stimuli and more than half of such forms from -o/e stimuli used suffixes of declension I, although all real declinable -o/e nouns belong to declension II, neuter gender. We suggest an explanation for these findings and discuss why the II declension neuter gender pattern is unproductive.