Grammatical observations of D. N. Kudryavsky and modern Russian language: declension of unchangeable nouns

The purpose of the article is to study the observations of D. N. Kudryavsky on the declension of loanwords with vowels in the word-final from his book Introduction to Linguistics (1912) taking into account the current state of the grammatical system of the Russian language. In modern Russian, indeclinable nouns in the aspect of inflection are presented as a special grammatical norm. The increase of analytism in the grammatical system of the Russian language strengthened the position of the zero declension of noun names. At the same time, in artistic speech we see the expressive usage of changeable forms of such nouns. In this regard, the study of D. N. Kudryavsky’s observations, examples and comments seems relevant. The article also draws attention to the perception of changeable forms of indeclinable nouns in the second half of the XX century and the early XXI century. The assumption made in the early XX century that the changeable forms would become normative did not materialize. However, D. N. Kudryavsky with his observations outlined the stylistic potential of unchangeable borrowed nouns.