Russian Sounds and Inflections

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 Bibliography ......................................................................................... 6 Abbreviations and Symbols ................................................................... 8 Acknowledgements ............................................................................... 9 Diagrams of Vocal Articulation ............................................................ 10 CHAPTER 1: PHONEMICS ................................................................. 13 1.1 Russian Phonemes ..................................................................... 13 1.1.1. Phonemic Neutralization ................................................... 13 1.1.2. Consonant Phonemes ....................................................... 14 1.1.3. Consonant-Descriptive Terms ........................................... 16 1.1.4. Paired Consonants ............................................................ 17 1.1.5. Notes on the Paired Consonants ........................................ 17 1.1.6. Unpaired Consonants ....................................................... 19 1.1.7. Notes on the Unpaired Consonants ................................... 20 1.1.8. Vowel Phonemes .............................................................. 21 1.1.9. Notes on Vowel Phonemes ............................................... 22 1.2. Rules of Automatic Phonemic Adjustment ................................ 23 1.2.1. Consonant Assimilations of Voice .................................... 23 1.2.2. Voiced-Voiceless Consonant Pairs .................................... 24 1.2.3. Summary of Positions of Distinctive Voicing ..................... 25 1.2.4. Consonant Assimilations of Palatalization ......................... 25 1.2.5. Hardening of Soft Consonants before Other Consonants ... 26 1.2.6. Geminate Consonants ....................................................... 27 1.2.7. Other Phonemic Consonant Changes ................................ 27 1.2.8. The Gliding of /i/ to /j/; Loss of /j/ before or after /i/ .......... 28 1.2.9. Unstressed Vowel Mergers (Reductions) ........................... 28 1.2.10. Sources of Word-Initial /i- y- ji-/ ........................................ 32 1.2.11. Vowel Syncope ................................................................. 32 1.2.12. The Withering Away of the Phoneme ................................ 32 VI TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 2: ORTHOGRAPHY AND PHONETICS .............................. 34 2.1. Orthography .............................................................................. 34 2.1.1. Consonant Letters ............................................................. 34 2.1.2. Vowel Letters ................................................................... 35 2.1.3. The Letter  ...................................................................... 35 2.1.4. The Spelling of Soft Paired Consonants ............................. 35 2.1.5. The Spelling of /j/ ............................................................. 36 2.1.6. Spelling Conventions after Hushers, Velars, and  ............ 36 2.1.7. Soft Sign ........................................................................... 38 2.1.8. Hard Sign ......................................................................... 38 2.2. Vowel Phonetics ........................................................................ 38 2.2.1. [i~y] .................................................................................. 39 2.2.2. Incomplete Ikan’e ............................................................. 40 2.2.3. [i˘£] ..................................................................................... 41 2.2.4. [ê â ô] .............................................................................. 41 2.2.5. [ä ö ü] ............................................................................. 41 2.2.6. [V E E˘] .............................................................................. 41 2.2.7. Summary of the Realization of Unstressed { äo} and { äa} in Endings ................................................................. 42 2.2.8. The Main Vowel Allophones and Where They Occur ....... 42 2.2.9. The Old Moscow Speech Norm ........................................ 43 2.2.10. Vowel Letters and Their Usual Phonemic and Phonetic Interpretations .................................................................. 44 2.3. Observations on Stress ............................................................... 45 2.3.1. Mobility of Stress .............................................................. 45 2.3.2. Secondary Word Stress ..................................................... 46 2.3.3. Clitics ............................................................................... 47 2.3.4. Semi-Stressed Words ......................................................... 47 2.3.5. Stress of One-Syllable Words ............................................ 47 2.3.6. Stress as a Suprasegmental Phoneme ................................. 47 2.4. Syllable Division ........................................................................ 48 2.5. Phonemic and Phonetic Transcription ........................................ 49 2.5.1. Transcribing Arguable Phonemic/Phonetic Distinctions .... 50 2.5.2. The Reflexive Particle -с .................................................. 51 2.5.3. Phonemic and Phonetic Transcription Contrasted ............. 52 2.5.4. Lower-Level Morphophonemic Transcription ................... 53 TABLE OF CONTENTS VII CHAPTER 3: MORPHOPHONEMICS AND TECHNICAL ORTHOGRAPHY ........................................................... 55 3.1. The Idea of Morphophonemics .................................................. 55 3.1.1. Morphophonemes ............................................................ 56 3.1.2. Morphophonemic Rules ................................................... 58 3.2. Idealized System of Russian Morphophonemes .......................... 58 3.2.1. Consonant Morphophonemes ........................................... 58 3.2.2. Vowel Morphophonemes ................................................. 61 3.2.3. Stress Morphophonemes ................................................... 62 3.3. Using the Cyrillic Orthography for Morphophonemic Description ................................................................................ 64 3.3.1. Radical Morphophonemic Representation ........................ 65 3.3.2. Some Technical Orthographic Conventions ...................... 66 3.3.2.1. Morpheme Junctures ................................................. 66 3.3.2.2. Spelling Junctures ..................................................... 66 3.3.2.3. Plain Zero ................................................................. 66 3.3.2.4. Softening Zero .......................................................... 66 3.3.2.5. Consonant Palatalization ........................................... 67 3.3.2.6. Mobile Vowel Marker ............................................... 67 3.3.2.7. Null ........................................................................... 68 3.3.3. The Letter Ο ..................................................................... 68 3.3.4. Summary of Technical Orthographic Symbols .................. 69 3.3.5. Iotated Vowel Ambiguity .................................................. 69 3.4. Important Issues and Processes in Russian Morphophonemics ... 70 3.4.1. Consonant Mutations ........................................................ 70 3.4.2. Irregular Mutations ........................................................... 72 3.4.3. Mutations and Softenings Inside Stems .............................. 73 3.4.4. Acquired Consonant Softness in Word Formation ............ 73 3.4.5. Soft-Stem Nouns ............................................................... 74 3.4.6. The Vowel Reductions Briefly Revisited ........................... 75 3.4.7. The (Morpho)Phonemic Status of  {i} and  {′i} ............... 76 3.4.8. The  ↔ Split (“Transitional ”) ..................................... 78 3.4.9. Summary of the Various { } Morphophonemes ................. 79 3.4.10. Summary of the Main Origins of the Spelled Letter ........ 80 3.4.11. The Items  {′a} and ю {′u} as Morphophonemes ............... 80 3.4.12. Stem-Changes Before Vowel Endings ............................... 83 3.4.13. Plain-Vowel Suffixes...