Mamistyi, gorodistyi and rabotistyi: semantics and use of non-standard denominative adjectives with the suffix -ist-

The article analyzes non-standard Russian denominal adjectives with the suffix -ist-. A diachronic overview of this word-formation model exhibits regular change both in the types of base words and the semantic types of derivatives. Among modern adjectives of this model which are included in the dictionaries, two main types of meanings are usually distinguished. However, by application of the corpus generation method, a large number of non-standard adjectives were found, for which eight basic meanings were identified. These adjective occur not only in the oral-written speech of the Internet, but also in fiction, journalism, colloquial speech, dialects and jargon. The article also examines morphological and syntactical peculiarities of these adjectives and proposes an explanation of their popularity.