Modern Russian Stress PDF
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise disposed of without the publisher's consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published MODERN RUSSIAN STRESS R. I. AVANESOV University of Moscow y^apemie B coBpeMeHHOM pyccKOM jiirrepaTypHOM H3biKe Translated by D. BUCKLEY PERGAMON PRESS OXFORD - LONDON · EDINBURGH · PARIS · FRANKFURT THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK PERGAMON PRESS LTD. Headington Hill Hall, Oxford 4 ab 5 Fitzroy Square, London W. 1 PERGAMON PRESS (SCOTLAND) LTD. 2 & 3 Teviot Place, Edinburgh 1 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 60 Fifth Avenue, New York 11, New York COLLIER-MACMILLAN CANADA, LTD. 132 Water Street South, Gait, Ontario, Canada GAUTHIER-VILLARS ED. 5 5 Quai des Grands-Augustine, Paris 6 PERGAMON PRESS G.m.b.H. Kaiserstrasse 75, Frankfurt am Main Copyright © 1964 PERGAMON PRESS LTD. Library of Congress Card Number 63-10101 Editor's Preface FOR a native English speaker the pronunciation of Russian is not difficult: there are very few Russian sounds that an Englishman cannot pronounce with ease. However, spoken Russian is bedevilled for the foreigner by the problem of stress. In this book, which is a translation of Professor R. I. Avanesov's Udareniye v Sovremennom Russkom Litera- turnom Yazyke adapted for use by English speakers, the precise nature of stress in Russian is analysed in detail, and copious examples of its function are provided. The glossary at the end of the book gives the correct stresses of several thousand commonly mis-stressed words ; this list itself is of immeasurable value to the student. The more Russian is needed as a language of active communication, the more does a precise appreciation of the function and importance of stress in the spoken language become essential. The simple and easily comprehensible nature of the exposition in this book makes accessible even to the elementary student all the information neces sary to ensure that his study of the spoken language is soundly based. Oxford, 1964 C. V. JAMES List of Abbreviations ace. accusative case adj. adjective dat. dative case fern. feminine gender gen. genitive case imp. imperfective aspect imper. imperative inst. instrumental case loc. locative case masc. masculine gender neut. neuter gender nom. nominative case part. participle peri. perfective aspect pi. plural poss. possessive prep. prepositional case près. present tense sg. singular 1st sg. first person singular N.B. Forms in square brackets show pronunciation. Chapter 1 The Concept of Orthoepy THE present work, which is devoted to the question of stress in modern literary Russian, belongs to the field of orthoepy. Orthoepy (from the Greek orthos—straight, correct, and epos—speech) may be defined as the sum total of those specific laws of oral speech that ensure the unity of its sound system in correspondence with the recognized standards of the national language. These have, through the process of time, been developed and consolidated in the literary language. From a practical point of view the meaning of orthoepy is in many ways analogous with that of orthography. Uniformity in the sound system of the spoken language contributes to quick and easy linguistic intercourse—as does uniformity in the written language: on the other hand, a lack of uniformity in the spoken language always impedes intercourse to some extent—just as it does in the written language (e.g. in a badly written letter). Thus linguistic standards in general, and orthoepic stan dards in particular, help language to fulfil in as complete and free a manner as possible its basic role, which is to serve as a means of communication between people. Historically, orthoepy develops side by side with the formation and shaping of the national language. Although elements of standardization of languages were known in 2 MODERN RUSSIAN STRESS earlier periods (i.e. before the formation of a national language), they did not in these periods take any account of the spoken language, or did so only to a slight degree. As a result of the slow development of public speech in these early periods, the spoken language was not the widespread means of communication that it later became. Thus divergences in the spoken language, mainly of dialectal origin, were preserved for a considerable time. The role of orthoepy grows with the formation of a national language when, in connection with the growth of capitalist relations, which finally overcome the elements of feudalism, various forms of public speech develop and become widespread, significantly increasing the import ance of oral speech in the life of society. In these circum stances the more pronounced the differences between the dialects in the language in question, the more important becomes an elaboration of a single set of linguistic stand ards for the country as a whole, and this includes ortho- epic standards. In their most important form the orthoepic standards of Russian became fixed as early as the first half of the seventeenth century, first as standards of the Moscow dialect and then, as the national language developed and consolidated its position, gradually assuming the charac ter of national standards. The latter were in existence in their present form by the end of the nineteenth century, although in certain respects they admitted of variations. After the Revolution the basic, distinctive features of the orthoepic system, which had been worked out before the Revolution, were retained. Only certain specific features which had assumed a vulgar or a local Moscow character were discarded. In a number of cases pro nunciation was brought into line with orthography. THE CONCEPT OF ORTHOEPY 3 The theatre has played an important part in the develop ment of orthoepy, for it has always sought to cultivate orthoepic standards in their purest form. In many lang uages stage speech is the basis of the general orthoepic system of the country. Orthoepy is becoming more and more important in this age of the cinema and, particularly, of the radio, which has obviously made the spoken language a far wider vehicle of communication than the written language.* * For further detailed examination of orthoepy see R. I. AVANESOV, Russkoye Literaturnoye Proiznosheniye, 2nd edition. Uchpedgiz, 1954. Chapter 2 Stress as a Part of Orthoepy THE extent of the field covered by orthoepy has not yet been fully established. Some consider orthoepy to be a limited concept, a collection of the rules of pronunciation in the narrowest sense of the word, and not including questions of stress. Others, however, consider orthoepy a much wider subject, a collection not only of specific rules of speech, but also of rules for the formation of grammatical forms, which may equally well relate to the written language (e.g. which should be used in Russian : CBeqén or CBe*i, KOjibixaeTca or KOJibimeTCH, rnmenée or THHréJie?). The correct meaning of orthoepy must be taken as that which includes both pronunciation and stress—i.e., the specific features of the spoken language that are not usually reflected to a sufficient extent in writing. Pronunciation means, firstly, the phonetic system of a language, i.e. the quality of its speech-sounds and the way they change under certain phonetic conditions (e.g. in Russian the change from a voiced to an unvoiced conson ant at the end of a word: xjié[6]a but xjie[n], Mopó[3]a but Mopó[c] ; or the vowel change [o] to [a] in the first pretonic syllable after a hard consonant: ,H[O]M but n[a]Ma, CT[O]JI but CT[a]jibi). STRESS AS A PART OF ORTHOEPY 5 Pronunciation also covers the sound formulation of individual words and groups of words, which is not governed by the phonetic system of the language (e.g. the need to say nji[a]THuiL· and not nji[ó]™uiL·, nycTfl[mH]Hö and not nycTn[VH]Mö). Such problems are not within the sphere of the phonetic system of the language, for they are con cerned with the sound formulation of separate, concrete words and forms, not with the possibility or impossibility of a sound's occurring in certain phonetic contexts (e.g. T[â]mniiiL· and H[Ó]CHIUL· pronounced like nji[a]THuii> or nji[ó]™uib, or ροΰκό[πΐΗ]ι>ΐΗ and ΤΟ[Η'Η]ΜΗ pronounced like πycτfl[uIH]L·IH or nycTfl[q'H]biH). However, the concept of orthoepy is not limited to pronunciation alone : it covers stress as well. Indeed, stress is one of the two most important elements in the spoken language, the other being the phoneme. The significance of stress varies from language to lang uage, depending on the nature of the stress (the way in which it is placed), on whether or not it has a fixed posi tion on a certain syllable, on its use as a grammatical criterion and on the existence of a greater or smaller number of stress variations in the dialects of the language in question. In so far as they relate to the Russian lang uage, all these points will be treated in the following pages. For the present we shall merely indicate that the part played by stress in Russian is very great indeed, since this may fall on any syllable (e.g. jjóporo, mopórae, Aopo- râ) and may change its position to denote different gram matical forms (e.g. Bona—BÓAy, MÓpe—Mopn, npnimji— npiiHHJiH—npHHHJiâ). Thus the correct observation of stress rules and patterns is of paramount importance in the spoken language.
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