Morphemic studies the significant parts of a word, such as root, suffix, prefix, ending. In Russian, the word may not have any of these components, except the root. He is the main carrier of lexical meaning. The rest of the word only clarifies it or expresses the grammatical meaning. A special place in this list is occupied by the ending, which is not necessary for independent words.
Self ending words
Parts of the speech of the Russian language are divided into independent and official. The latter include conjunctions, prepositions, particles, and interjections. They have no lexical meaning and act only as a complement to the meaning of independent words or to connect them in a phrase, sentence. Therefore, they are unchanging and have no endings.
The independent parts of speech consist of such morphemes that can change, expressing belonging to a particular grammatical category. Most often this is the ending.
Almost all full-value tokens have it. The simplest word structure : root + ending. The root is almost always unchanged. The only exceptions are complex language processes, such as the alternation of sounds. The ending is always changing.
The role of ending in a word
The ending is the minimum significant part of the word, expressing the grammatical meaning and serving to connect the words with each other. Full words with the ending can vary by cases, persons, clans, numbers and other grammatical categories. This provides grammatically correct combinations in phrases and sentences.
The ending position in a word is the absolute end. True, in the Russian language there is a verb postfix -sya, which is located only at the end of the word. Therefore, the ending may face him. But this is an exception to the rule.
To highlight the ending, you need to bow the word in any of the well-known grammatical categories. For example, a change in the number shows what sound will change: a dog - dogs, green - green, she - they . As you can see, in all these words the last letter (sound, morpheme) has changed. This will be the end.
Unchanging Full Meaningful Words
In the Russian language there are full words without endings. Examples of them are known to many: high, taxi, sing . These are full-fledged parts of speech, but due to historical circumstances and grammatical features, they do not change, and therefore do not need endings. Grammar related for these words are prepositions.
The expression of gender, number, case in such words is determined by the dependent on them. For example: a green-eyed taxi is the last word in the singular. This is evident from the name of the adjective, which is also in this form.
Unfortunately, not everyone knows what words are without ending in Russian. These are nouns borrowed from other languages: kangaroo, coat, Mississippi . Verbal infinitives also have no endings: sing, dance, somersault . Adverbs are full-valued unchanging words: high, hot, fast . The last sound is often called the ending, although it is a suffix characteristic of adverbs.
The special form of the verb - participle - also has no ending, since it has incorporated some grammatical signs of the adverb: reading, running away .
Zero endings
Also in Russian there are words without endings, examples of which actually have endings: horse, table, door, night . It appears when the case or number changes: horse - horses - horse - horses, table - tables - tables - tables, night - nights, door - doors .
This phenomenon in philology is called zero ending. In its initial form, it has no physical expression. In the Old Slavonic language, such an ending was expressed using the letter b, which was not readable, but indicated that this word could change: table, floor . Over time, this letter was lost, and the ending in such words ceased to be physically present.
Therefore, you should be careful when defining this morpheme in meaningful words.
Words of foreign origin
Language interactions are an invariable part of the process of lexical enrichment. Depending on the time of borrowing a word and the activity of its use, it can be strongly integrated into the grammar system or not. Long-borrowed words by many native speakers are already perceived as native: mast, accountant, telephone .
There are a number of tokens that could not become a full part of the language: taxi, metro, kangaroo, coat, coffee .
In these words at the end there is a vowel sound, which is perceived by many as a variable part. In fact, these are words without endings, examples of which we meet every day.
Therefore, it is grammatically incorrect to say: a conversation at a coffee shop, a girl with a finger, to come by a meter, on two taxes . There are no grammatical justifications for such changes in the Russian language yet. Perhaps, over time, they will become full-fledged mutable words, but at the moment of the development of the language they remain in only one form.
Infinitives
To the question of whether there are words without endings in the Russian language, each philologist will answer in the affirmative. Indeed, there are also many native tokens that do not change, which means that they do not have a number of grammatical categories.
These are primarily infinitives. The system of verb forms of the Russian language is quite extensive and diverse. The fact is that these forms can exist as independent parts of speech, while possessing the main feature - to indicate action.
Infinitives are the initial form of verbs. Their main task is to carry the lexical meaning: the action as such without reference to the person, time and method of its implementation ( read, write, run, sing ).
In this form, they can appear in sentences both in the verb role and in the noun. If the infinitive has an ending, it becomes either a personal verb or a participle.
Another invariable form of verbs - participle - indicates the process of performing an action and is formed not by the end, but by the suffix characteristic of this part of speech.
Adverb
The adverb never acted as a changing part of speech. These are just those words without endings, examples of which show that the connection in phrases is possible without changing the grammatical category.
The role of adverbs in the language is to indicate additional circumstances of the action. Although they have a lexical meaning, in fact they do not possess full independence.
For example, “ slow” or “ fast” indicates the pace of an action. But without a verb it is not clear what is at stake. The same applies to any other dialect.
Therefore, the wealth of grammatical categories, like a verb or a noun, it does not, and is not required. Indeed, the main semantic load expresses the lexical meaning and suffix characteristic of the adverb.
Own foreign names
Among the immutable words, and therefore without end, is the majority of foreign proper names: Rio de Janeiro, Mississippi, Peugeot . These words have a poor prefix, root, ending, suffix.
The reason for this is a feature of the foreign language system. Some moments seem to the uninitiated person quite similar to the Russian language, although in fact we are faced with interlanguage homonymy at the level of specific morphemes.
There is, of course, a whole array of similar words that have long entered our language and become part of its grammatical system: Sahara - Sahara, Andes - in the Andes, Rhine - on the Rhine . But in such tokens, the endings are exclusively Russian and have nothing to do with the native languages of these words.
Morphological wealth
Philology knows many words without endings, examples of which are daily used in speech by all native speakers. The possibility of the existence of these lexemes is provided by the wealth of morphemes and their grammatical meanings.
Not only the ending can change the form of a word, but also suffixes. In addition, it is more often observed when the end of one word acts as an indicator of grammatical categories in the second. That is, the main word requires from the dependent exactly the form that is characteristic of himself: a gray coat, in a gray coat, with a gray coat, a gray coat.
In the same English language, most words have no endings at all, and grammatical categories are expressed using prepositions, which causes severe difficulties in learning Slavic languages by native speakers, in which the paradigm of endings indicating a particular form of the word is quite developed.