Russian Conjugation III

Thursday, February 11

Russian Conjugation III

Another concomitant change is the familiar suffixal -ova- of the infinitive/past going to -uj- in he present. He puts it: “Before dropped a, the group ov is replaced by uj”. It can also be part of the root: ковать кую ‘forge’, and two of my favorites, плевать ‘to spit’, плюю, блевать блюю ‘to vomit; notice the soft C in the stem that accounts for the юю; and the more familiar совет—овать совет—ую ‘advise’, танц—евать, танцую ‘dance’.

In the same category of concomitant changes Jakobson puts the limited changes of the vowel o in monosyllables and zero in nonsyllabic stems, before dropped j, to i: мою моешъ моют, мыть мыл ‘wash’; пьй—у (пью), пить, пил ‘drink’. Note that ‘i’ comes out ы if the preceding C is hard, but и if it is soft. (The morphophonemic base of this last verb is p’j—, as the zero cannot occur before the infinitive or past masc. morpheme, but i could occur in all these environments. This also sets up the explanation of the imperative of this verb, Part IV, to come.)

Before dropped nasal, zero in monosyllabic stems is replaced by a: на–чн—ут, на–чал ‘begin’.

Now to scrutinize some other stem structures. An open full stem can end in any of the five V’s i, e, a, o, u. The last C before the V is soft (palatal ч щ ж ш or palatalized) before e and i, hard before u and o, and hard or palatal (never palatalized) before a.

This is really a remarkable generalization. We get говорить ‘speak’, видеть ‘see’, молчать ‘be silent’, писать ‘write’, исчезнуть ‘disappear’, колоть ‘stab’. The stems morphophonemically are govor’—i, v’id’—e, molč—a, p’is—a, isčez—nu, kol—o.

I haven’t noted the stresses, as they are a further complication, but it is a stroke of great originality that he uses stress to help determine the present tense endings. There is no talk of first or second conjugation at all. Instead the acoustic distinctive features are invoked here.

If the endings are stressed, he says, they begin with an unrounded vowel in soft open full stems, like those of говорить, молчать above: говорят, говорит, молчат, молчит. (The first sg is always у/ю). If the stem is NOT soft, open, and full, the endings begin with a rounded V: So ждать. ждёшь, ждут, нести, несёшь, несут. This is the rule of acuteness attraction. Soft stems (palatal and palatalized) take unflatted (unrounded) vowels (i, a), and hard stems take flatted or rounded vowels (o, a). The roundness also reduces the pitch, so o and u are grave in this opposition, while i and u are acute.

If unstressed, all stems have endings beginning with a high vowel (see Conjugation part 1): u, i. This the the rule of intensity attraction. Unstressed vowels are less sonorous than stressed vowels. The high vowels are diffuse and of lesser sonority, while the low vowels are more sonorous.

Note how these rules account for the vowels in рабОтает, спрАшивает, пИшет, Едет (pronounced i) as well as those in живёт, ждёт, начнёт, which we ‘feel’ are somehow part of the same conjugational pattern, vs. the soft open full stems, which are ‘second’ conjugation and have i, a.

This remarkably original idea has proven far too abstract for teaching purposes, to say the least.
In soft full stems (palatal or palalatized) the final C of the stem preserves its softness throughout, but in the first sg it is substitutive. This is the переходное смягение that we see in derived imperfectives like спрашивать and in past passive participles like спрошен. Here are the correspondences:

t k ч (щ)
x s ш
g d z ж
zg zd жж
sk st щ
l r л’ р’
p b пл бл
m мл
f фл
v вл


Сижу, куплю, люблю, вижу, мажу, пишу, чищу, графлю.

A stem-final C followed by a or o in a polysyllabic stem is softened substitutively before any V ending. This is a very general rule that seems somehow ad hoc. Why does this take place in polysyllabics? Isn’t there some deep j that got in there somehow? This has always been a sticking point for readers. It produces писать, пишу from p’isa— but пИсать пИсаю from p’isaj—.
The fourth and last part of Russian Conjugation will follow.

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