Russian Conjugation II

February 3, 2010

More on Russian Conjugation

I continue here my brief summary of the principles in Jakobson’s epochal article of 1948, “Russian Conjugation.”

The present tense and the imperative use vocalic endings (V), while the past tense and infinitive use consonantal endings (C). This is the basic opposition in the system. Most verbs have, to the observer, two very similar stems, one ending in a C and taking V endings, the other ending in a V and taking C endings. They form a dichotomy.

Examples: жив—у, жив—ёшь, жив—ёт, and so on, for the present and imperative; these stems end in a consonant, but endings start with a V.

Past: жи—л, жил—а. жил—и, infinitive жить. These all have stems ending in a consonant (here, a resonant), and endings in V.

For this overarching rule, sonorants and resonants are considered consonants, but they form a special subdivision of consonants, as we will see.

Then stems are classified. Open full stems lose their final V before a V. So, still using Cyrillic, лёжа—у > лёжу ‘I am lying down’, and so on for the present tense лёжу—ишь, лёж—ит, but past лёжа—л, лёжать.

Narrowly closed stems are those in the sonorants j, v, m, n, which acoustically are more like vowels, but still are not full vowels. These stems are always closed before any V and always open before any C. Using Roman letters for analysis: d’elaj—u ~ d’ela—la. See how the j disappears in the Russian spelling: делаю делаешь.

Then there is another important, but unproductive class, the broadly closed stems, those in k g t d s z b r. They are all ‘irregular’ but central to the system, something like strong verbs in English. You have to know them and use them all the time, but they are special. These stems stay intact before some of the C endings, even though they end in C’s.

In this class, terminal dentals drop only before the past ending: v’od—u ‘I lead’ but v’ol (вёл) ‘I led’. Stems in s z b r are never truncated, keeping their C’s always: несу несёшь несёт; нёс, нёсла; нёсти. (Notice what happens in the past tense here: нёс—л# in the masculine turns into нёс).

Deep truncation is one of my favorite Jakobson terms (it calls to mind Adorno in its esoteric allure). Example: the suffix ну drops in the past if it means ‘change of state’: исчезнуть, исчез, исчезла ‘to disappear’. Another example: before j—, the group va, if preceded by a, is omitted in the present (not the imperative) and the stress falls on the following syllable. This sounds complicated and it is indeed hard for you to learn. It is very much like a strong verb in English.

So: давать ‘to give’, продавать ‘to sell’, отдавать ‘to give over, to pass’, have the present tenses даю даёшь даёт даём даёте дают, and so on. This works also for compounds of -знавать and –ставать.

gmc