Basic Principles of Russian Noun Stress (Powerpoint)

Basic Principles of Russian Noun Stress With a Short Addendum on Verbs • Russian stress types can often look complicated and hard to remember. • I would like to present the stress types in a new way. • The vast majority of Russian words has constant stress on a fixed syllable in all of its forms. For these words, you just have to remember where the stress is. • Called type A, e.g. елу́док, ́ у к , де́ т е. • Can also be called “lexical” stress: a word (lexical item) determines where the stress is in all its forms. • More troublesome types of Russian stress: accent is not on the same stem syllable in all forms. • Grammatical or morphological stress: grammatical positions determine stress. • We will concentrate on Russian noun stress and look at the singular and plural patterns as separate units, since that shows the system better. • Singular and plural forms together are known as the paradigm. Singular or plural forms alone are subparadigms. • Two basic types of morphological stress: type B and type C. • Types B and C each have two possible stress positions: • 1. Type B can stress either the ending or the stem‐ final syllable. • 2. Type C can stress either the ending or the word‐ initial syllable. • Recalling that type A can stress any stem syllable, here is a diagram comparing all three: • A: #_______ − .... # B: #.........__ − __ # C: # __......... − __ # • Here are some examples showing these stress positions. For types B and C, the examples are shown either in the singular or plural subparadigm: • 1. Examples for A on different stem syllables: елу́док, оло́то ́ ушк , • 2. Examples for B on ending and stem‐final: е ете о́/ е етё ; от ́/ о́т • 3. Examples for C on ending and initial: оло ́/ о́ло у; о́ло / оло ́ ; е́до о т / едо о те́ • Types B and C each can have two subtypes. Type B subtypes depend on the genitive case ending, while type C subtypes depend on the nominative case ending. • Let us start with rules and examples for type B. Type B Stress Pattern Rules Applies to: Both Singular and Applies to: Plural only. Plural Genitive = Non-zero Genitive = Zero Result: End-stress in entire Result: Stem-final stress in subparadigm entire subparadigm • The B subtypes are genitive case ending in a zero or something else (non‐zero). In the singular, there is only the non‐zero genitive. • Rule: if the type B genitive is zero, all subparadigmatic forms stress stem‐final; if non‐zero, they stress the ending. • Examples of type B subparadigms with non‐zero genitive and end‐stress: • Since all genitive singular endings are non‐zero, all singular B‐stress is end‐stress. N A G L D I ́к ́к к ́ ке́ ку́ ко́ е е е е е е ете ете ете ете ете ете о́ о́ ́ е́ у́ о́ т т т т т т еко еко еко еко еко еко у́ ́ е́ е́ о́ ́ • Now consider the same nouns in the plural, where the first noun also has a non‐zero genitive plural, like its genitive singular. However, the other two nouns have zero genitive plurals, which causes them to have stem‐final stress in the entire plural subparadigm, as follows: N A G L D I к ́ к ́ ко́ к ́х к ́ к ́ е е е е е е етё етё етё етё етё етё х т т т т т т еко́ еко́ еко́ еко́ х еко́ еко́ • Note that a type B noun has the same stress throughout each subparadigm (either stem‐ final or end‐stress). Type C differs in that it can have a single case form that differs from all the other cases of its subparadigm (e.g. о́ло у). • Тhis single opposed form always has a high vowel ending (/i/ or /u/) and always affects either the most central nominative/accusative (direct) cases or the least central locative‐2. • The two C subtypes depend on whether the nominative case ending is a Mid/Zero type or a High/Low vowel type ending: • 1. high or low vowel /i/, /a/ (High/Low type) • 2. mid or zero vowel (Mid/Ø type) Type C Stress Pattern Rules Nominative = Mid/Zero Nominative = High/Low Applies to: Singular only. Applies to: Both Singular and Plural. Result: Initial stress in subparadigm, Result: End-stress in subparadigm, except for: except for: end-stress in high-vowel locative initial stress in high-vowel (Locative-2). nom./acc. (direct case). Single opposed form: high-vowel Single opposed form: high vowel locative nom./acc. • Let us examine the range of type C singular subparadigms. Both high/low and mid/Ø nominatives can occur here, yielding primarily initial stress and end‐stress. • The first four examples in the table have zero nominatives and end‐stress only on high‐vowel locatives (if they occur). Mid‐ vowel nominative ( е к ло) is similar. • оло represents the high/low class, with mainly end‐stress, except for a direct case in a high vowel. Opposed forms bolded. N A G L D I L2 ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ------- ́ ------- ́ ́ о и́ о́ о ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ------- ́ ́ ------- • Plural of the nouns shown above. Only the high/low types of nominatives can occur in the type C plural and no high‐vowel locative is possible. Pattern is end‐stress, except for direct cases (nom./acc.) with high vowel ending /‐i/. Opposed forms are in bold. N A G L D I о́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́х и ́ ́ ́х ́ ́ ́ о о ́ о о и и ́ ́х ́ ́ о́ и о́ и ́ ́х ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ -Ø ́х ́ о́ о ы о́ о ы ́ -Ø ́х ́ ́ ́ • In addition to the pure type B and C types shown, there are “mixed” types, with type B singular and type C plural, or vice versa. Thus, the entire regular stress inventory for Russian nouns consists of five types: • 1. Type A lexical stress with constant stress in all forms. • 2. Type B in both singular and plural. • 3. Type C in both singular and plural. • 4. Mixed BC, with B in singular and C in plural. • 5. Mixed CB, with C in singular and B in plural. • BC examples: ко , у , о ко • CB examples: , од , о е о • In the case of a BC noun, the genitive form would determine the stress in the singular, while the nominative would do so in the plural. For example, ко acts like a B, with end‐stress, in the singular (ко ́); but, like a C, with mobile stress, in the plural (ко́ , ко е́ , ко ́ ). • For reference, examples of all the major types are shown on the following table. The “pure” types are listed as AA, BB, CC, to show that both singular and plural subparadigms follow the same pattern, in contrast to BC and CB types. Basic Inventory of Nominal Stress Types in the Main Russian Declensions Nominative in Zero , , , ч AA BB CC BC CB Nominative in -a AA BB CC BC CB Nominative in -o ч ч AA BB CC BC CB It also should be noted that there are some exceptional groups that don’t fit this model. One of the main ones is a group of loan words, largely from Caucasian, Central Asian, and Old Church Slavonic sources, which have type B end‐stressed plurals, in spite of their zero genitive plurals and expected stem‐final stress. E.g. т д ́; ́д . plural т д ́ , not expected *т A quick glance at how verb stress works: • Present tense verb stress is much simpler than noun stress. The roles of B and C are reversed. • In nouns, type C (initial~end) was mobile, but for verbs type B is mobile (stem‐final~end) and type C has constant end‐stress, a kind of role reversal. ́, • Type B end‐stress is conditioned by an ending in a vowel (л л ́ , л ́ ; but л ́ т with stem‐final and an ending in a consonant). л • In the past tense, there is no difference between stress types B and C, since the past is considered a derived form, and B and C merge when derived. • A combination of stem‐size and stem‐type allows us to predict B/C merged past tense stress in almost all cases. Here is a table that shows the rules: • That ends our survey of Russian stress. Due to the large number of details, it takes many hours of study to master the system. • I hope this gave you some idea of what the system looks like.