Why is налогоплатЕльщик the correct form, and not налогоплатИльщик?

Question

In most cases, we derive nouns in -щик from verbs. We observe the following pattern:

носить - носильщик
давить - давильщик
морить - морильщик
красить - красильщик
просить - просильщик
лудить - лудильщик

We also have платить. So why it is платЕльщик? That seems highly unnatural to me.

score 10 · Answer 1 · edited May 25 '23 at 13:37

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This is the so-called "и - е swap" (мена и - е)

Trubachyov in Труды по этимологии: Слово. История. Культура attributes it to Russian glycolalia (сладкоязычие), which tends to mix stressed ий and ль in some dialects.

It's common to replace stressed ий with ей in Russian. That's why we have names like Сергей, Мокей, Алексей (from Сергий, Мокий, Алексий), words like змей, книгочей and the dialectal word Расея.

Glycolalia, among other things, causes stressed иль to be replaced by ель in some words by analogy with ей < ий:

апрель < априль < Aprilis
канитель < канетиль < cannetille

This contamination is most likely the cause of the swap in the word you cited above:

плательщик (= платейщик) < платильщик (= платийщик)
молельщик (= молейщик) < молильщик (= молийщик)

edited May 25 '23 at 13:37

CocoPop

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answered Oct 02 '13 at 14:24

Quassnoi

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This does not explain why there is no such change in other words. Молельщик could change under analogy with болельщик. – Anixx Oct 02 '13 at 14:38
@Anixx: what did болельщик change from? And yes, there are lots of words keeping the paradigm (all those mentioned in your example), it just happened so that those two did shift it. – Quassnoi Oct 02 '13 at 14:51
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болельщик is from болеть (not болить), so the e is substantiated here. – Anixx Oct 02 '13 at 17:01
similarly радельщик from радеть – Anixx Oct 02 '13 at 17:07
@Anixx: yes, all those words do obey the paradigm. What's your point? – Quassnoi Oct 02 '13 at 17:23
the point is that when the verb has e the noun usually has e, when the verb has и the noun has и except in плательщик and молельщик (although the later could be from моление) – Anixx Oct 02 '13 at 17:45
@Anixx - And also молельный and молебен. – Yellow Sky Oct 03 '13 at 00:21

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited May 25 '23 at 13:38

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Maybe because of платеж / платежный. Maybe if Russian had платильный and not платежный, it would be платИльщик.

edited May 25 '23 at 13:38

CocoPop

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answered Oct 04 '13 at 13:03

Sergey Kirienko

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 25 '23 at 13:39

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This is a typical aberration; when simplifications, dialect, parochialism, etc. invade the sphere of classical rules for particular language. "ПлатИльщик" is and must be recognized as the only correct option.

edited May 25 '23 at 13:39

CocoPop

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answered May 25 '23 at 01:01

Поморский Печенег

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Hi and welcome to Russian.SE! Could you please clarify what exactly you mean by "must be recognized as the only correct option"? Thank you! – Quassnoi May 25 '23 at 05:17

Why is налогоплатЕльщик the correct form, and not налогоплатИльщик?

3 Answers3