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Expressive Ggemination in the Russian Language

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Expressive Ggemination in the Russian Language EXPRESSIVE GGEMINATION IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE Nadežda Christopher SOAS [email protected] Keywords: geminate, gemination, reduplication, double consonants, sound symbolism The matter of geminates in the Russian language is a fairly straightforward one as far as Russian grammar books are concerned (Lopatin, 2009). Dvoinie soglasnie (double consonants) mainly occur due to affixation or word compounding. However, a lot of these double consonants [CC] do not have the phonological extra length quality of a true geminate [C:]. In this paper I examine the previously undescribed Russian expressive geminates, and juxtapose them with the double consonants. I propose that the expressive geminates are the true geminates in Russian, arising from reduplication of phonological material. I also propose that further research can lead to the discovery of new linguistic universals, which expose the complex cognitive nature of many phonological phenomena cross- linguistically. Russian double (long) consonants are usually correspondent to two letters in orthography, however, two consonants in writing do not always indicate a phonological double consonant, as the examples in (1) show. The Russian words are followed by their transcription and meaning; stress is marked by the accent mark. (1) Россия – [rasíja] – ‘Russia’; кристалл – [kristál] – crystal; коррозия – [karózija] – ‘corrosion’). The examples in (2) contain words with double consonants that arose due to the morphological processes of affixation or compounding (the morpheme boundaries are indicated by a dash ‘-‘). (2) Без-закон-ный – [bezzakónnyj] – ‘unlawful’; глав-врач [glavvráč] – ‘head physician’. We can see here that the orthographic double consonants are reflected in the pronunciation of these words and are realised as [CC]. I argue that these are not the true Russian geminates as each of the two consonants in a cluster is pronounced somewhat separately, accentuating the orthographic double representation, whereas in the case of gemination, one consonantal sound is prolonged, and would be represented as [C:], as in the example in (3). (3) Original form Meaning Geminated form Meaning хороший ‘good’ [har:óshij] ‘very/extremely good!’; can also be used [haróshij] sarcastically to mean ‘not good at all’ or ‘silly’ (of a person) As well as the change in the quality of the sound, we observe the change in meaning, which can be characterized as expressive colouring or intensification (verified with ten native speakers of Russian). The next step is to consider gemination as an instance of reduplication within the wider context of reduplication in Russian, which can be full or partial and predominantly has ‘an expressive connotation’ (Israeli, 1997:588). I propose that Russian expressive gemination is, in fact, an instance of full reduplication of a phonological segment (in our case, a consonant), which results in intensification of meaning. What is especially interesting about this observation and proposal is that in cases of expressive gemination, the meaning of the whole word is intensified as the result of reduplication of only one of its consonantal constituents, which leads to further questions regarding the underlying cognitive nature of consonants and their sound symbolic characteristics. Further investigation into the nature of the expressive geminates in the Russian and other languages can lead to discovering new cognitive phonological universals, which would not be restricted to a single realm of linguistic knowledge, but rather demonstrate their interconnectedness. References Israeli, A., 1997. Syntactic Reduplication in Russian: A Cooperative Principle Device in Dialogues. In: Journal of Pragmatics, 27, pp. 587-609 [online]. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216696000288 [Accessed 6 August 2016]. Lopatin, V.V. ed., 2009. Pravila Russkoi Orfografii i Punktuacii. Polnii Akademicheskii Spavochnik. Moscow: Eksmo. .
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