2.06 · Practice ready Genitive Plural 0 of 10 lessons complete
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Genitive Plural

The major plural formation challenge: zero endings, -ов/-ев, -ей, stem repair, and quantity

choose among the main genitive plural strategies and recognise lexical exceptions repair stems with fleeting vowels and high-frequency irregular plurals use five-or-more and quantity-word constructions accurately supply the forms required by animate accusative plural in the next module

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Before you start

Prerequisites
Complete Module 2.05 first
Estimated time
50 minutes
Lesson steps
10

Deliberately not taught here

  • This module teaches noun forms and core quantity syntax. Full declension of cardinal and collective numerals remains a separate system.
Small steps

What you will learn

  1. Why genitive plural needs its own module Unlike dative, instrumental, and prepositional plural, genitive plural has several competing endings and frequent stem changes.
  2. Masculine hard stems: usually -ов For many masculine nouns ending in a hard consonant, -ов is the productive default.
  3. Masculine -ев and -ей patterns -й often leads to -ев; soft -ь and sibilant stems commonly take -ей.
  4. Feminine zero endings and -ей Many -а/-я nouns lose their nominative ending; feminine -ь normally takes -ей.
  5. Neuter zero endings, -ей, and -ий Hard-stem neuters often have zero; soft stems often take -ей; -ие nouns normally end in -ий.
  6. Fleeting vowels and stem repair Zero endings can create impossible or disfavoured clusters, so о or е appears, disappears, or alternates inside the stem.
  7. Five and above: the digit and teen rules In nominative and many inanimate accusative quantity phrases, five-or-more selects genitive plural.
  8. Quantity words and measurement forms Countable plural sets normally take genitive plural; mass or abstract amounts often take genitive singular.
  9. High-frequency irregular forms The best strategy is a compact active list organised by plural stem.
  10. Genitive plural assessment and decision strategy Use a default strategy, then check known stem classes and lexical exceptions.
Mastery

Ready means you can...

  • choose among the main genitive plural strategies and recognise lexical exceptions
  • repair stems with fleeting vowels and high-frequency irregular plurals
  • use five-or-more and quantity-word constructions accurately
  • supply the forms required by animate accusative plural in the next module
Next module 2.07 Accusative Plural A fully derivable animacy system: nominative plural for inanimates, genitive plural for animates