What is the ending in the word what. What is a zero ending in Russian

Schoolchildren very often have questions about how to distinguish words without an ending from words with a zero ending. The confusion with this comes from a misunderstanding of what an ending is, what role it plays. This question is both simple and complex at the same time. Simple because understanding this linguistic term absolutely accessible to the student. A is difficult because its study requires knowledge of what a word change is, how a word differs from a word form, and therefore, ultimately, knowledge of what the grammatical meaning of a word is.

What is ending

So, let's start with the fact that there are words with an ending and words without an ending. Examples of words with an ending: house-a, cat-a, dad-a, well-a, window-y, beauty-s, earth-e, yam-ah. Examples of words without endings: tasty, fun, not, for, hoping, working.

The first group of words ends in sounds or combinations of sounds that change if you change the form of the word: houses (houses), cats-y, dad-oh, windows-a, beauty-oh, earth-yah, yam-e. More precisely, it is precisely because the ending changes that the form of the word changes. If the word "cat" ends with -a, then we will understand that we are talking about one cat: "A fat cat is sitting on the fence." If at the end of the word -i, then, depending on the context, we can talk, for example, about the absence of a cat: “There is no longer a fat cat on the fence”, or about several cats: “All cats love to sit on fences.” In the above sentences, we used three forms of the same word "cat": in nominative case in the singular (the cat is sitting), in the genitive singular (there is no cat), and in the nominative plural (the cats love).

We can also, for example, change the word “world”: world-a, world-e, world-om, world-s.

Grammatical and lexical meaning of the word

Let us note that this is exactly the same word, since we are talking about the same phenomenon of reality, which is characterized in the same way. If we wanted to characterize this phenomenon differently, we would use the possibilities of numerous affixes of the Russian language: kitty, koshunya, koshulya, koshusya, koshandra ... By adding emotion, evaluation to the word, we formed a new word: cat and koshushya are different words, and not forms of the same word. These words have different lexical, but the same grammatical meaning: Nominative case, singular. We can form other forms of these words: cats, koshuses. These are different words in the same form, that is, their lexical meanings are different (we neutrally refer to the animal with the word “cat”, and affectionately call it the word “mowing”), and the grammatical meanings are the same ( Genitive, plural).

Similarly, we can do with the word "peace". Forms of the same word: house-ah, house-y, house-oh, house-ami, house-ah. Words derived from it with a different meaning (the same meaning plus an expression of our relationship or specification of the size): house-ik, house-in-a, house-seek-e.

Word-forming and formative morphemes

As you can see lexical meaning here it changes with the help of a suffix, and the grammatical - with the help of an ending. But this does not mean that the suffix can only change the lexical meaning. For example, in the word “walk-l-a”, the suffix -l- is the past tense suffix of the verb “walk”, that is, with its help a new word is not formed, but its form is formed.

Thus, there are such parts of the word with the help of which new words are formed - these are word-forming morphemes, and those with the help of which they change, the forms of the word are formed - these are form-forming morphemes. The ending (inflection) is a formative morpheme.

What words can have an ending

From this we can draw the following logical conclusion. If the ending is a formative morpheme, that is, a part of a word that changes its forms, then it can only be in those words that change. Going through a random series of words in search of words with endings is irrational. They need to be looked for among the words of certain categories, namely, among certain parts of speech. Let's say nouns mostly mutable, which means they have endings.

Words without ending. Examples

However, there are words that do not change their form. So, these are words without an ending. Examples should be looked for among the words of certain grammatical groups. For example, these are adverbs. As you know, this is an invariable part of speech, which means that adverbs have no endings: cheerfully, patiently, resourcefully (the dog cheerfully ran after us; mother patiently listened to her daughter; in disputes, this man always dodged resourcefully).

Adverbs should be distinguished from short forms of adjectives neuter: "This sentence was resourceful and witty." Here the final -o is the ending indicating the neuter and singular.

Checking for termination

It is easy to prove that in short adjectives -o is the ending. We need to change the word: "This remark was resourceful and witty." The final -o was replaced by the final -a, which indicates the feminine gender. The adjective has changed its form to agree in gender with the noun.

Accordingly, there is only one way to define words without an ending. If it is impossible to form the forms of a word, then the word has no ending.

Zero ending

It is just as easy to “calculate” words with a zero ending. The rule here is simple: if the word has forms (changes), and an ending expressed by sounds appears in place of the “silent” ending, then the apparent absence of inflection is null ending.

Let's say the word "world" ends with the consonant of the root R, after it nothing sounds in the word. However, it is worth changing this word: worlds, worlds, worlds, worlds, as we see that a sounding ending appears after the root. This means that its absence in the nominative case of the singular is imaginary, in fact, instead of pronounced sounds, there is an empty window, an empty cell, which can be filled at any moment. Moreover, it is precisely by the fact that it is not filled that we determine the case and number. This is an example of a minus sign. The silence of the ending in this case is no less significant than its specific sound.

There are many examples of such significant absences in life. For example, a sign with its name can be lit up above the entrance of a cafe during business hours. Then, if the lights are off (silent), for potential visitors, this means that the cafe is closed. If the green light of a traffic light is not on, this does not mean that it does not exist at all, its "silence" is significant.

A dash or gap at the place where the price is indicated in the restaurant may mean that the specified dish is not in the assortment.

If you enter the house and shout: “Who is at home?”, then silence will be a sign for you that the family is still absent. A dark window can also indicate this.

Zero termination and no termination

Thus, the null ending is a kind of "off" morpheme. It was turned off in order to express its "silence" a certain meaning. In the words “hands-(-)”, “legs-(-)”, “heads-(-)”, “clouds-(-)”, this empty, “non-burning” window means the genitive plural. In the verbs "walked-(-)", "spoke-(-)", "sang-(-)" - the masculine singular. In all these word forms there is an ending, but it is expressed by zero sound.

Therefore, it would be wrong to say, for example, that “ruk” is a word without a suffix and an ending. There really is no suffix here, but there is an ending. The sound of the word ends with the sound "k", and its composition, the actual boundaries - with a morpheme expressed by zero sound.

The absence of an ending, in contrast to the presence of a null, is a place beyond the boundaries of a word. It is not opposed to the “on” ending, since the grammatical nature of this word does not imply an ending at all. Well, fearfully, under, with, deepening are all examples of words without an ending.

Thus, in the morphemic analysis of a word, it is necessary to distinguish words without an ending from words with a null ending. Variable lexical units will have an ending, even if it is expressed by zero sound, and the composition of unchanged words does not imply an ending, including zero.

Each part of speech has its own ending, which is unique to it. For verbs they are personal, for adjectives and participles they are generic, for nouns they are case. Variable words in one of the forms may have zero endings.

The ending is a variable part of the word, it helps to determine which morphological structural unit you have to deal with. In such morphological entities as adverbs, gerunds, pronouns from the category of personal, service ones have no endings. This is because they are immutable.

Verb endings

At the end of the verb, tense, person and number are determined. The word "write" is considered. The ending -ut indicates that the verb is present (future tense), third person, plural.

The variable part will tell you what number and case the noun is in. Adjectives with participles have gone further, their endings point to:

• Number
• case

Ending adjectives

There was, for example, the word "clear". Its ending -th testifies to masculine. Let the base remain the same, but the ending will change to -th, there will be the word “clear”. This adjective has become female. And only the ending has changed.

Adjectives have their constant landmarks, knowing about which, it is impossible to make a mistake. It looks like this. The endings involved in the analysis are:

So the word is an adjective in singular, masculine, in the nominative case. This can be done with feminine and neuter adjectives.

These are the tricks that the most changeable part of words does.

There are such identification marks for endings, by which you can immediately tell what kind of part of speech is in front of us.

Ending nouns

Identification marks of parts of speech

Nouns have the following endings:

• Masculine - th, ь
• Feminine - a, i, b
• Middle gender - oh, e
• Plural- and, s

Nouns change in cases, have characteristic endings and are divided into three declensions. The first includes both feminine and masculine endings -a, i. To the second, only the masculine gender of nouns ending in a consonant, and the neuter gender in -o and -e. the third declension has only the feminine gender with the stem in -ь.

Defining grammatical meanings endings can serve to form new words. Thanks to them appear various forms the same word. In addition, they link words in phrases and sentences.

I'll start with the second part of the question. There are no first, second and third endings.
Remember: the first, second and third can only be declension for nouns and person for verbs.

A null ending is an ending that occurs on a number of modified words. Its difference from other endings is that it is not expressed by any sounds or letters. Consider the words: table, horse. Zero endings in these words are indicated by empty rectangles.
Zero endings in these words are the same indicator of grammatical form as are the "ordinary" endings for the same words in other forms, for example: table, horse.
Compare:

• Table: zero ending for masculine nouns 2 cl. - this is the indicator I.p.
• Table A: ending A at inanimate nouns masculine 2 cl. - this is the indicator R.p.
• Horse: zero ending for feminine nouns 3 dec. - this is the indicator I.p. or V.p.
• horses And:ending And feminine nouns have 3 cl. - this is an indicator of R.p., D.p. or P.p.

Attention:

IN different forms one word the stem will be the same. In our examples, these are the basics: table And horse.

It is a gross mistake to think that words table, horse there are no endings. Only invariable words, for example, adverbs, do not have endings.
The last vowels in adverbs are suffixes, for example: tomorrow A, above at, left A.