Full vs. Short Predicate Adjectives in Russian Spiritual Verses: Stylistic and Grammatical Perspectives

This article investigates the use of short and full predicate adjectives in Russian spiritual verses. The study presents comparative analysis results from three collections of Russian spiritual poetry: V. Varentsov's Collection of Russian Spiritual Verses; “The Dove Book: Russian Folk Spiritual Verses of the Eleventh to Nineteenth Centuries”; and “Spiritual Verses of Northern Russia.” It examines the quantitative distribution between short and full predicative adjective forms as well as their stylistic distinctiveness. Drawing on grammatical criteria for distinguishing between predicative short and truncated adjective forms — namely, their syntactic function that determines an important feature such as case inflection — the authors explore morphological and syntactic factors influencing the predicativity of full adjectives: subject expression mode, position relative to the subject, presence or absence of a copula verb. A grammatical pattern is identified: when an adjective and noun are distant from each other, the degree of predicativity increases for full adjectives, whereas it decreases with close proximity. Special attention is given to describing unique syntactic constructions involving possessive relationships with full predicative adjectives, emphasizing the syntactic status of these adjectives within communicatively organized utterances.

Russian spiritual verses, adjective, short predicative adjectives, full predicative adjectives