I decided to put this question into the beginners section because it's a pretty simple question. Usually inflectional endings of nouns don't confuse me, but I've never really caught onto one trend.
Как бы мы говорим, без слов?
Could I please have some light shed on the rules for when a genitive plural will use the null inflection?
Thanks a bunch guys and have yourselves a good day.
Generally - it is very simple: any noun which has -а/-я or -о ending in its dictionary form, takes zero ending in genitive plural.
There are a few exceptions, though: ухо - ушей, око - очей (око is an archaic word for глаз). And also some masculine nouns tend not to take -ов in genitive plural (носок - без носков, some people say без носок; сапог - размер его сапог; ботинок - цвет моих ботинок and some others).
But as for the general rule - just use what I wrote above. If it is -я then it will be a zero ending (always, the same as for -а), but a soft sign will be used to keep softness: баня - бань, дыня - дынь, тётя - тёть, дядя - дядь (although dictionaries say "дядей" is possible, but I think it is outdated), Катя - Кать, пуля - пуль etc.
fortheether and Antonio1986 like this.
The first one is the dictionary form (nominative singular): баня. And in all of my other examples the same sequence is assumed.
So, "я" (as I hope you know) serves for two purposes: 1) represents the vowel sound of "а"; 2) indicates softness of "н". So, phonetically it is [б А н' а] (the stressed vowel capitalized, the apostrophe is used for softness). If you remove the nominative singular feminine ending [а] (to get the zero ending), what do you get then? [б А н'] Now spell it in Russian orthography: бань.
Thanks. Is the soft sign null ending also applied to nominative words ending in -a?
The soft sign does not belong to the ending.
You confuse pronunciation and spelling. Pronunciation is primary, spelling is a way to render the pronunciation in writing.
Do you see what I mean? The first noun (струна) has its stem with a hard consonant before the ending, the second one - with a soft consonant.
Actually, both струна and баня have the same ending - it is the feminine ending [а].
But the final consonant of their stems is different.
No i completely understand that. No worries we're having a communication problems. Thanks for your help! It's all good now.