A Reference Grammar of Russian

This page intentionally left blank AReference Grammar of Russian AReference Grammar of Russian describes and systematizes all aspects of the grammar of Russian: the patterns of orthography, sounds, inflection, syntax, tense-aspect-mood, word order, and intonation. It is especially concerned with the meaning of combinations of words (constructions). The core concept is that of the predicate history: a record of the states of entities through time and across possibilities. Using predicate histories, the book presents an integrated account of the semantics of verbs, nouns, case, and aspect. More attention is paid to syntax than in any other grammars of Russian written in English or in other languages of Western Europe. Alan Timberlake refers to the literature on variation and trends in development, and makes use of contemporary data from the internet. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and language professionals interested in Russian. alan timberlake is Professor of Slavic Linguistics at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The Nominative Object in Slavic, Baltic, and West Finnic (1974) and editor of The Scope of Slavic Aspect (with M. S. Flier, 1985), American Contributions to the Eleventh International Congress of Slavists (with Robert A. Maguire, 1993), and American Contributions to the Twelfth International Congress of Slavists (with Robert Maguire, 1998). AReference Grammar of Russian ALAN TIMBERLAKE University of California at Berkeley cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521772921 © Alan Timberlake 2004 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2004 isbn-13 978-0-511-16446-0 eBook (EBL) isbn-10 0-511-16446-7 eBook (EBL) isbn-13 978-0-521-77292-1 hardback isbn-10 0-521-77292-3 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents 1 Russian1 2 Sounds 28 3 Inflectional morphology 92 4 Arguments159 5 Predicates and arguments 270 6 Mood, tense, and aspect 371 7 The presentation of information 444 Bibliography 473 Index 493 v 1 Russian 1.1 The Russian language 1.1.1 Russian then and now The present study is a comprehensive description of all aspects (except word derivation) of modern standard Russian: its sounds, spelling, grammar, and syntax. Russian has resulted from a long evolution that can be traced back to the first millennium of our era. From the fifth century on, speakers of Slavic established settlements over a vast area of Central and Eastern Europe, from the Danube in the south to the Elbe in the northwest. In the east, they moved north from the Dnepr valley to the Gulf of Finland and the Upper Volga, gradually displacing or assimilating the previous Baltic and Finnic inhabitants.1 Russian developed from the dialects of Slavic spoken in the north of this East Slavic territory. In the ninth century, the East Slavic area came under control of Scandinavian merchant-warriors. The Christianization of this land in 988 was followed by subjugation to “the Mongol yoke” from the thirteenth century into the fifteenth century. As the favored agent of the Golden Horde, the once small principality of Moscow brought ever more land under its control. By the end of the fifteenth century, when the Mongol yoke was definitively removed, Moscow had become the political and ecclesiastical center of the East Slavic lands, and the center of the Russian language area. Russian is not only a spoken language, but a written language used for all cultural purposes. The modern form of Russian took shape over the course of the eighteenth century. The morphology and phonology is based on the dialect of Moscow. In its vocabulary, syntax, and rhetoric, Russian, while relying on native Slavic elements, has a long history of adapting and internalizing foreign -- Byzantine, French, and most recently English -- models. Parenthetically, it could be noted that the modern word héccrbq ‘Russian’ is an adjective deriving from the noun Hécm ‘Rus’. According to a venerable etymology, 1 See Sedov 1982 on the complex archeological record of the East Slavic area. 1 2 AReference Grammar of Russian Hécm wasadescriptive name for Scandinavians that is based on the Germanic etymon ‘to row’, the Scandinavians being above all oarsmen.2 In East Slavic lands, Hécm was used initially for the Scandinavian overlords and their principality of Kiev. Over time it was extended to all East Slavic lands. Muscovy appropri- ated the name for its political identity, culture, and language as it consolidated power. Russian is the first language of approximately 150 million people. According to an estimate for 2002 the Russian Federation had a total population of 145 million people, among whom 81.5 percent, or 118 million, were ethnic Russians.3 In the mid-nineties, there were an additional 25 million Russians in the newly in- dependent countries that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union (Novaia Rossiia 1994). Together that would make 143 million ethnic Russians. To that figure could be added a substantial though indeterminate percentage of the remaining 27 million members of other nationalities residing in the Russian Federation. According to recent statistics, the rate of population growth in the Russian Federation is negative (−0.33%), from which it would follow that the number of speakers of Russian will not increase in the foreseeable future. 1.1.2 Levels of language Russian is a spoken language and a written language. In its written form Rus- sian has long been highly codified: grammars, dictionaries, and manuals define standards for usage that are enforced in the educational system and through editorial practices in publication. Although the Russian tradition is quite clear about what usage counts as standard, it does acknowledge the existence of a range of varieties, or registers,from archaic to bookish to standard (normative) to colloquial (hfpujdjhyfz htxm)tosubstandard and uncultured (ghjcnjhtxbt). The grammar recorded here is the normative grammar of standard, written Russian, which is the culturally privileged, and also the most accessible, form of Russian. Occasionally, there are asides on usage in less-than-standard or oral language, but this study cannot treat colloquial Russian with the same attention as the works of E. A. Zemskaia and colleagues,4 which have documented the sig- nificant differences between spontaneous spoken Russian and formal, written Russian. 2 Possible candidates are Roþer, Roþin,former names for Sweden’s Uppland region, and roþs- ‘oar’, thegenitive form used in compounding (Thomsen 1879:99--104, also Vasmer 1986--87:s.v. Hecm,de Vries 1962: s.v. rj´ðr,Schenker 1995:57--60). A form of this etymon was adopted into West Finnic languages (Finnish ruotsi ‘Sweden’) and into Slavic, and then found its way into Greek (␳<ς ) and Arabic (rus¯ ) sources from the ninth and tenth centuries. 3 At: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html#People. 4 Zemskaia 1973, 1978, 1983; Zemskaia and Shmelev 1984; see also Timroth 1986. Russian 3 Russian has undergone some change since the political and economic tur- moil of the late eighties and early nineties, but it is difficult to assess how much. Most tangibly, there have been changes in vocabulary.5 Borrowing and native derivational processes have produced many new words and word combinations, leading to macaronic texts: ytqk-fhn ‘nail-art’, WEB-lbpfqy ‘WEB-design’, Htrbq ,bhvbyutvcrbq lb-l;tq gj bvtyb Graham Mack lb-l;tbk ct,t, lb-l;tbk, lf nfr b ljlbl;tbkcz, xnj c hflbj eitk ‘A certain Birmingham DJ, named Graham Mack, DJ-ed, DJ-ed, and so DJ-ed out, that he had to leave the radio station’. This internationalized vocabulary now dominates the linguistic land- scape, just as Soviet-speak used to dominate language a half century ago. Along with these changes in vocabulary has come a less quantifiable but still palpable change in the mores of language. Unedited, informal texts of written Russian of a type that would never have become public during the days of active So- viet censorship are now available in print and especially electronic form. And yet, despite political changes and a loosening of speech manners, contemporary Russian in its grammatical structure remains Russian. 1.2 Describing Russian grammar 1.2.1 Conventions of notation The notational conventions employed here are those of Table 1.1. In the body of the text, Cyrillic words and phrases will be given in italics, and English translations in single quotation marks. Stress is marked in citation formsofwords or short phrases; stress is not marked on vowels in fragments of text cited in the text or in set-off numbered examples. In numbered examples, italics and quotations are not used. 1.2.2 Abbreviations The abbreviations used in this study are listed in Table 1.2. 1.2.3 Dictionaries and grammars The definitive dictionary of Russian in Russian is the Slovar sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka,aseventeen-volume dictionary published over 1950--65. Self- evidently it does not include the numerous new words from the last sev- eral decades. Shorter Russian-language dictionaries are fully useful, notably Ozhegov’s one-volume classic, which conveniently lists grammatical forms with stress.

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