Действующий и будущий регуляторы отрасли — Минфин и ЦБ — согласовали проект реформы аудита в России.
This is from an article from kommersant.ru, why are the adjectives at the start in nominal singular form. Why aren't they действующие и будущие?
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because those are different regulators– shabunc ♦Commented Sep 6, 2017 at 6:58
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51+1=2. Singular+Singular=Plural– AriochCommented Sep 6, 2017 at 7:17
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3 Answers
That's short for "действующий регулятор и будущий регулятор".
It's a perfectly valid and quite widely used construct in Russian. E.g. "a blue pencil and a green pencil" (синий карандаш и зелёный карандаш) can be shortened to "синий и зелёный карандаши" which I don't think is possible in English ("a blue and a green pencils"?). It's a kind of ellipsis where the noun is omitted after the first adjective. More examples to give you a better feel for the construct (they may sound contrived - that's because they are):
Старший и младший братья = the elder brother and the younger brother.
Новая и старая дороги = the new road and the old road.
That's because Минфин is действующий регулятор отрасли and ЦБ is будущий регулятор отрасли.
At this moment Ministry of Finance is responsible for audit activity. But Central bank will get this function from Ministry in the future.
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So the answer is 'because you have only one at a time: one действующий and one будущий'– AlexVBCommented Sep 6, 2017 at 7:45
The thing is that in this particular case the word соответственно is omitted, which is perfectly valid per se but it complicates understanding for a non-native speaker.
Think of this phrase like of:
Действующий и будущий регуляторы отрасли — Минфин и ЦБ соответственно — согласовали проект реформы аудита в России.
Which can be translated to something like:
Present and soon-to-be industry controllers - Minfin and CB accordingly ...