Talk:Russian grammar

File:Havronina.jpg

Havronina is one greatest Russian grammar workers

Well, I'm glad to see the russian grammar page has improved by such a huge degree since I last saw it! Good work, whoever contributed.

Havronina may be a great Russian grammar worker, but her place is definitively not in this article. Bogdan | Talk 16:31, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm a bit hesitant to change the article... but... I believe that the term of choice among Russian scholars is "plusquamperfect", not pluperfect. Such forms as хаживал etc. can be viewed as plusquamperfect. - User:i@k5

• 1. Pluperfect is the standard English term for the Latin "plusquamperfectum", French "plus-que-parfait", and the Russian "плюсквамперфект". The form being described here is the ancient ходилъ бѣ or ходилъ былъ есть, as in (though some dispute it, I know) the modern зачин to so many folk tales, жили-были дед и баба....
  2. The form you've quoted is rather imperfective-in-the-past in its meaning ("I was walking" or "I had been walking"). I realize the two-aspect and three-tense description simplifies some of the theoretical considerations. Sokolova (1962, "Очерк по исторической грамматике русского языка") and Meillet (1932, "Le Slave Commun"), if I remember correctly (but I'm going on memory), make a case for approximately four Slavic aspects, "и(д)ти -- ходить -- пойти -- хаживать", or something of the sort.
  3. The grammar article is not excellent, I know. All of the text was originally written to be in the main article and is therefore much overgeneralized. Many objected, and others moved it to the specialized article, but a lot of work is still necessary.

A. Shetsen 15:59, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ah, you're correct on both counts (1 and 2). Shame on me, I'm such a hopeless amateur. - User:i@k5

Italics

Cyrillic italics are notoriously hard for new learners to read. Why are so many of the examples in Russian written in Italics? It's obviously a different alphabet, so I see no need to further set off the text. Taksim25 16:47, 18 August 2005

That is not true. There are fonts that use cursive italics and fonts that use so called false italics. You can change the fonts in your browser and/or wikipedia settings. Example Screenshot--Hhielscher 15:25, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Marginal Notes Of A Native Speaker

I am a native speaker of the Russian language, raised in a literate family and indeed having a good educational background. I have no formal linguistic training; to my defense, I have learned both English and Latin by myself. Obviously not being able to dispose a systematic device of the language science, I, nevertheless, dare bring forth a critique of the article before the language science wise, hoping that rather informal nature of Wikipedia would allow these notes to be treated as marginal only by their location on an imaginary leaf, not my standing in relation to the field of lingistics.

In the order of the article text:

1. Nouns. Verify that the I and II declensions of nouns are not swapped. In all Russian references, designations are reversed; this was true in the early 80s when I was taught, and this is so in Litnevskaya^[1], a modern reference grammar (with lots of typos). Ostensibly, they may be designated differently in American and British traditions — but please verify that.
2. Ibidem, of the III neuter -мя: acc. sing. -мям is apparently a typo, must be -мя (I am changing that). FWIW, Litnevskaya^[1] does not separate the 10 -мя nouns into a separate declension (there is no neuter III nouns otherwise), treating them as an exception, but I do not know of what theoretical importance is this fact.
3. The word путь (path) m. declines as III f. except for inst. sing. путём.
4. Covered in the article is only the substantive declension. There are also adjective and mixed declension models — I believe that they deserve at least to be mentioned.
5. Adjectives.. The section looks too simplistic to me. I would at least mention the difference between the qualitative [may be unterm] and the possessive adjective, especially given that they undergo a different declension scheme. I understand that an encyclopedic article is not supposed to replace a text book, but this is rather a misleading omission, since declension is detailed the qualitative. The comparative and superlative may also be mentioned, as are the full and reduced forms.
6. Ibidem. “After a sibilant or velar consonant, и, instead of ы, is written”. Even granted that the phonology must be my weakest topic, it is clear to me that this statement cannot be correct. For example, н, a nasal, can be neither velar nor sibilant; cf. летний (summer [e.g. camp]) v. лётный (flying [e.g. school]). The rules, as I know them, are a) that и follows a soft stem, and ы a hard stem (I cannot think of a single word violating this one), and b) жы and шы never happen (this is absolutely forbidden, as are чя and щя).
7. Pronouns. Оба / обе (both) deserves to be mentioned if only for its gender peculiarity (feminine обе if replaces two feminine entities, m. оба in all other cases), which is likely an ancient artefact. I am sure that a linguist would produce a much better comparison to other languages than I could.
8. “The present tense of the verb быть… is today… used… very formally, in the third person plural.” This is not so. One shall exercise a great command of the subtlest nuances of a language to use archaic words in such a way that they feel more appropriate that their modern counterparts to better convey the sense or "feel" of the speech, the latter goal being, IMO, the only reason to choose an archaic word or construct. This applies equally to суть and other archaisms, and the line between the fine and the pretentious is extremely thin. The word has been gained some use lately, but practically all instances of its use were indeed wrong. The word does not invoke as strong a reluctance as other archaisms do perhaps because of its cognation to the perfectly valid and existing noun суть (gist) and the adverb по сути (essentially). But in any case, it is rather unthinkable to find it in "formal" speech, such as that of newscasts or legal documents.
9. The Present-future. It has never occured to me before that the future and present could be regarded as morphologically one tense. While this is true that future perfective is morphologically the present tense, it is nevertheless syntactically the future. It would require additional constraints beyond tense agreement when constructing compound clauses: while “Буду ехать домой — прослушаю новости” (I will have listened to the news while I will be driving home) или “Приеду домой — буду слушать новости” (I will be listening to the news upon arriving home) are perfectly valid, “Буду ехать домой — слушаю новости” is not. All sentences are in morphologically same tense; the first two are in the syntactical future tense, which is making them them agree, and the last one is in different syntactical tenses, what makes it nonsensical.
   Albeit having been taught differently (specifically, that perfective verbs in the future tense and imperfective verbs in the present tense have the same conjugation model), I am not contesting the theory behind the article — and, FWIW, I like this approach better; I am rather pointing that the article does not explain (in)validity of the combinations of tense and aspect in my examples above. I like the classification, because it exposes morphologic parallels to other languages in the IE family, but it needs to be extended — either by referring to “the other”, syntactical tense, if such a concept has the right to exist (it should, unless I was taught in the school orthogonally to the course of the language science), or, in the end, any other restrictive rule to that same effect.
10. Question: what Russian consonants are considered sibilant? Certainly Ш, Щ, Ч, but are a) С b) З c) Ж d) Ф e) В f) any other?
11. Irregular verbs. If the verbs listed are irregular, then my estimate that 3/4 of all verbs in common use are, forming pretty much a regular system among themselves :). Again, I am not contesting the statement “these verbs are irregular”; if they are, assuming that irregular verb a well-defined scientific term, then let them be such, but there is a clear implication in the article language that the list is an exclusive one. Alternating the ultimate consonant of the root is way too common (is mutation of consonant the term for this?) for me to provide more examples than there is currently. There said to be a rule regulating this mutation, but I admit that I have never needed to know it ;). Such behavior is in no way confined to the verb, and observed in all inflecting parts of speech.
    On the other hand, there are verbs that behave, if we reserve the word irregular for a special term, quirkish:
    • Dual declension. Very uncommon, I could find only two such verbs. Conjugated partly as I, and partly as II (conjugation number is in superscript in the table below):
      • хотеть (to want, impf.) → хочу, хочешь¹, хочет¹, хотим², хотите², хотят²;
      • бежать (to run, impf.) → бегу, бежишь², бежит², бежим², бежите², бегут¹;
    • Interesting that we would find “Бежат Европы ополченья!” in Pushkin^[2] and, even more interesting, in Kuprin^[3], “Это бежат сотни и тысячи испуганных рыб, cпасающихся…”, written as recently as 1911!
      The use of the opposite, хочем, хочете, хочут, has been regarded as extremely illiterate, if not ever then since long ago.
    • Reflexive transitive verbs. Very uncommon, also only 2 examples: бояться (to fear), стесняться (to be shy). Unlike other tr. verbs, which take object in acc., these take object in gen. (бояться грома, to fear thunder; стесняться своего роста, to be shy of one's own height); бояться also rarely takes a person in acc. (бояться жену (to fear wife), but I would rather use gen. in this construct, and certainly gen. with a non-living animate or an inanimate object; it could be formally valid usage, still not looking to me as correct as the one with the gen. :) )
    • Aspect lexical immutability. Not uncommon. Both pf. and impf. have lexically and inflectionally identical forms: казнить (to execute), женить (to marry), крестить (to baptize), обещать (to promise) and all verbs ending in -ировать, again according to Litnevskaya^[1]; cf. Вчера он наконец женился He finally got married yesterday v. Он женился несколько раз He was married a few times.
      There is more to this list, but I must go on to the next item, to keep my note short not very long.
12. Word formation. The example given is not the best one possible (by the way, мысление is incorrect, the right form is мышление: welcome the mutation at work again). Besides, Russian can be extremely elaborate in ad hoc word formation, mostly colloquial, especially humorous, sarcastic or plain derogatory, while most of the given examples can be easily followed in other languages too (think, thinker, unthinkable, rethink, thinkinglessly, thought[less[ly]], though[ful[ly]], etc); while English morphology does not prohibit some forms, it seems to me there to be not as extensive a tradition of doing that in English-speaking communities, e.g. to sarcastically refer to someone “still” not coming up with a solution to an intellectual problem as an unthinker, or “This is plain wrong!” — “But I thought...” — “Then unthink it back!” etc. In Russian, this may work, in the case of a derogatory statement, like “Куда ты пропал? Я оборался тебя звать!” (“Where the hell 'you been! I [yelled till the end of it] calling you up!”; from орать, to yell), which sounds rather smacky for an allusion of обораться to обосраться, an indecent and rude reference to desurgere sine voluntate. Personally, I believe that even such an elaborate construct may get composed spontaneously, more likely in anger, mirth or other emotionally excited state, with allusions yet hidden even from the speaker, as unconsciously as most language processes are. I sometime realize only after some deliberate thinking that an expression that I have overheard and perceived as bold and slappy alludes to some other (often bolder and slappier) expression or concept.
    While we are at this point, I will try to come up with something for the front of the article that euphemizes by allusion a milder insult, still as simply and efficiently as this one, and also find a branchier generative tree of words.
13. Compound words. It is easy indeed to find many compound words in the language beyond a street name in St. Petersburg, starting with the words of advanced age. There are archaisms among them, e.g. греховодник (sinner, lit. sin-conduct^[a]-or), криводушие (duplicity, lit. crooked-​soul-​ness); words with a long record: прямодушие (single-heartedness, lit. straight-​soul-​ness), which is not obsolete, unlike its crooked cousin, гостеприимство (hospitality, lit. guest-​accept-​ity), громовержец (the Thunderer, usually of Zeus/Jupiter, lit. thunder-​strik(e)^[b]-​er); a few obligatory curses e.g. осточертеть (to be fed up [with it]), lit. ((till the end of it)-​hundred-​devils-​(verb ending)), more recent formation пароход (steam vessel, lit. steam-​navigation, о seems to be only a conector, but verify), тепловоз (diesel locomotive, lit. thermal-​carrying^[c]; abundance of modern borrowings, literal e.g. криптография (cryptography, lit.) and translated e.g. внутричерепной (intracranial, lit. idem), and, of course, новояз (newspeak): a body of unnecessary, unprompted and ungrammatical neologisms, formed almost exclusively by abbreviation, ranging from нарком (народный комиссар, people's commissar) to мособлтяжмашснабсбыт and beyond (no kidding. Decoding but keeping the order of the comprising words, incorrect for the Russian language anyway, Moscow regional industrial equipment logistics and sales). The article currently seems to make not a difference between this imposed word formation and a natural one (bringing up organically grown Каменноостровский as a rebuttal of Ushakov's contempt). As an exercise, imagine, and then try not to frown on everyday usage of Westchstatlosanpoldep (Westchester station, Los Angeles Police department) or scrapometalloadequatelysupplied. :) Many of these “words” did not survive the government of the agglutinators by a year or two; some, however, did.

All in all, I would be glad to proofread and edit relevant parts an article, as well as supply examples of language use, but I believe that systematization must be done by a language pro, and thus I am not up to start to write; I think that I can write sections to it (unless the above is a clear indication to the contrary :) ), but only under a guidance from a linguist.

Are these cognates correct?

• ^a вод-ить = Lat. ducere.
• ^b [requires prefix]-верг-ать = Lat. icere.
• ^c воз-ить = Lat. vehere.

References

1. ^ Е. И. Литневская. Русский язык. Краткий теоретический курс для школьников БСМП «ЭЛЕКС-Альфа», 2000
2. ^ Наполеон в кн.: А.С.Пушкин. Собр.соч.в 10 тт., ред. С.С.Благой и др., т.1, М., Худ.Л, 1959; ред. И.Пильщиков,В.Литвинов, РВБ, 2000.
3. ^ Листригоны в кн.: А.И.Куприн. Избранные сочинения. М., Худ.Л., 1985.

Kkmº 09:57, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

(1) You are right, I learned some Russian grammar from soviet books, and the first and second declensions were the other way around. If you compare the first three declensions of Latin, they are almost perfectly analogous to the the three Russian declensions the way that I learned them. Unless somebody has a good reason, I think I should correct this sequence.

(2) You are completely correct. They are definitely part of the third declension. Not only did I learn them that way in Soviet textbooks, but these are also analogous to the third Latin declension. Perfect example: Compare Latin 'name' ("nomen"- nom. sing.; "nomina"- nom. plur.) to Russian 'name' ("имя"- nom. sing.; "имена"- nom. plur.).

(6) The rule you quoted is mostly correct, but it only applies to velar and sibilant (except 'С' and 'З') consonants. The 'Н' is obviously not a velar or a sibilant, therefore it does not follow that rule. The point is that the velars and five of the sibilants can only be followed by 'И' even if their root ending is hard. Examples: друг-други, нож-ножи. This is an orthographic matter. Someone should definitely include the fact that the sibilant letters 'С' and 'З' do not follow this rule.

(8) Again, you are correct. That should definitely be changed. I rarely encounter enough new Russian-speakers to use formality, nevertheless, that word is a vital part of my vocabulary (along with every other Russian-speaker I know). How else would you say the very common phrase "I have one/it"? I can only think of "у меня есть" (Literally "at me (it) is").

(10) Most phoneticians do not consider \f\ and \v\ to be sibilants. 'С' and 'З' are sibilants, but they do not follow the same grammatical rules as 'Ж', 'Ц', 'Ч', 'Ш', 'Щ' (i.e. 'И' instead of 'Ы').

It would definitely be good if you took the time to fix this article. I'd love to help, but this is really distracting me from my preoccupation.--67.177.36.200 08:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

(8) I agree. Although it is true that the word есть is important in modern Russian, I (also as a fluent Russian speaker) think that the most appropriate definition of this word is "there is/are". For example, "Есть много людей" = "There are (or there exist) many people." Your example is correct, and it is indeed how we express possession in Russian - however, although many books indeed translate it as "at me is..." I think it makes much more sense to translate it as "To/at me there is...", i.e. there exists something and it is in my possession. However, the article implies that есть is used today mostly in the third person etc. etc., but this is totally wrong, because it's a simple fact - modern Russian normally never uses the verb "to be" in the present tense. We do not use this verb in the third person, nor in any person, to mean "is/are". In fact, it is customary to place a dash (-) in place of the verb to be in written russian. For example, "Он - здесь." = "He (is) here." Since I am not a linguist either, I am not going to make any changes, but I believe that this certainly should be made more clear/accurate.

Another minor point I'd like to make. The article says that Russian allows multiple negatives. I think that it's more accurate to say that Russian in fact REQUIRES using multiple negatives to negate a sentence. For instance, in the given example, leaving any of the parts in the positive makes the sentence grammatically incorrect (at least, it doesn't sound correct at all).

(please excuse the multiple editing, didn't notice the preview option). --EngineeringCat 00:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Replace Hex/Entitly Characters with Real Cyrillic

Is the time up for replacing those &#nnnn; character codes (7 unicode characters each!) with plain cyrillic characters? The page is already 40K in size!

Kkmº 12:59, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Vowel Reduction

I'm fairly certain that the IPA in the article doesn't take into account phonological processes like vowel reduction. I think someone familiar with Russian phonology should go through and incorporate such processes. AEuSoes1 12:07, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Missing cases for the nouns in Russian Language

The table with six cases is oversimplified, although it is exactly what is used in beginner level Russian text books. Different academic sources list between 9 and 15 cases for Russian language, although the actual count is debatable.

Here are all the missing cases I could find:

1. Locative (в лесу, в снегу, в кровИ, в слезАх) this case is strictly different from Prepositional (о лесе, о снеге, о крОви, о слЁзах) for some 200-300 words, most of these words are very common monosyllabic nouns.

2. Partitive aka Genitive II (сахару, чаю, воды) This is called "количественно-отделительный" in ref. 2. Used to denote an amount which isn't a number (a spoon of sugar, a bucket of water, some tea)

3. Counting I (шагА, рядА, часА, шарА) - used for amounts two, three, four, twenty-two, twenty-three, etc. Similar to Genitive Singular (шАга, рЯда, чАса, шАра) except for the accented syllable in several common words.

4. Counting II (чулков, сапогов, человек, вольт, грамм, гусаров, байт) - This case is called "счётный" in ref 1 and 2. This is NOT identical to Genitive Plural which it is often confused with (чулок, сапог, человеков, вольтов, граммов, гусар, байтов)

5. Illative (в солдаты, в люди, в зятья) - This case is called "включительный" in ref 1 and 2

6. Awaiting case: (жду мать, жду письма, жду результата) - This debatable case is called "ждательный") in ref 1 and 2, it appears after the verb "wait for" and is usually simular to Genitive and Accusative.

7. Abessive (не читал газеты) this debatable case is called "лишительный" in ref 2.

8. Vocative Church Slavonic (боже, господи, владыко, отче) This is the only nontrivial case mentioned in the article.

9. Vocative Old (деда, доча, сынка) (archaic, but still in use in the country)

10. Vocative New (дядь, мам, Лен, тёть, солнц, ребят, девчат, батянь) (recent development in colloquial Russian. This case applies to all personified nouns ending with -a or -ya) ref 3

References 1: Zaliznyak A. A. "Русское именное словоизменение." Moscow.: Science, 1967.

2: Uspenskij V. A. "К определению падежа по А. Н .Колмогорову // Бюллетень объединения по проблемам машинного перевода." Issue. 5. Moscow., 1957.

(available online at http://www.kolmogorov.pms.ru/uspensky-k_opredeleniyu_padezha_po_kolmogorovu)

3. Klobukov E. V. "Семантика падежных форм в современном русском литературном языке. (Введение в методику позиционного анализа)" Moscow: Moscow State University Press, 1986.

4: Miloslavskij I. G., "Морфология // Современный русский язык / Под ред. В. А. Белошапковой". 2nd ed.. М.: Высшая школа, 1989.

This list is mainly based on a discussion in the newsgroup fido7.ru.linguist from January 2005.

I do not suggest inserting the whole thing into the article on Russian Grammar (although it's an interesting possiblity), but a mention must be made.

Moods versus Tenses in Verbs

This section contains the quote, "Verbal conjugation is subject to three persons in two numbers and two simple tenses (present/future and past), with periphrastic forms for the future and subjunctive, as well as imperative forms ..." This seems to imply that subjunctive and imperative are comparable to tenses, rather than moods. It also soes not discuss moods outside of this sentence (that I could see). I understand that perhaps one needs to use a periphrastic particple for future tense or for particular tenses within an imperative or subjunctive mood, as that is true in a number of languages, but merging the two concepts together is unclear. Are imperative and subjunctive moods always periphrastic, regardless of tense? Is there only one tense available in each of the aforementioned moods? What other moods are there? (ie, indicative obviously, but is there a conditional?) I can't update this, as I have no idea how Russian works (which is why I was looking up the page).--Frick898 20:42, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Ordinal Numbers

I inserted these since they are used quite frequently with dates, etc. The number sections could be combined into a single table if anyone has the time. Hopefully I didn't step on any toes. :-) --Elgordon 05:51, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Ablaut

Over on the article on Indo-European ablaut there has been a request for examples from other languages (at present we refer to English, German, Latin and Greek). Any chance of some of you Slavic experts looking over there to see if you have anything to add? Possibly a whole sub-section on ablaut in Slavic languages would be justified? --Doric Loon 13:59, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

It's kinda late, but: дохнуть - дух - дышать (abluat from *u : *ou : *ū) 195.113.149.177 (talk) 23:15, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Personal pronoun table?

Hi, sorry if I'm being obtuse, but it looks like the table of personal pronouns is missing a header row or two — the table gives each pronoun's case, but not its person, gender, or number. Could someone help? Thanks! Ruakh 00:39, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Fixed.Bridesmill 01:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) Ruakh 01:42, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Gerund

Another thing worth mentioning is gerund and participle formation for adjectives and verbs respectively. These are widely used in literature. ie (masculine forms): ~вший, ~[у¦ю]щий, (мы form)+ ~ый, ~ен

Passive Past Participle.

Active Past Participle.

(each from imperfective and from perfective verbs).

Gerund (present and past).

I can't think of many examples i'm afraid, but here goes (correct me if i'm wrong):

Писатель, написавший эту книгу, молодой поэт. (The writer who wrote this book is a young poet.)

Мальчику, читающему эту книгу, четыре года. (The boy who is reading this book is 4 years old.)

книги, выпускаемые в России, интересные. (Books [which are] published in Russia are interesting.)

[need example for: "subject [which has been] verb..."]

Сидя в комнате, она читал книгу (sitting in the room, she read [/was reading] a book)

Знав (having known)

I'm really not 100% about these examples, so please correct me. Thanks.

Mattura

There is no gerund in Russian. What do you mean by Russian gerund? Please, provide examples. Perhaps you mean причастие (e.g. знающий) and деепричастие (e.g. зная)? Both причастие and деепричастие are rendered by participle into English. --Andrei Knight 01:16, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Proposed to merge Reduplication in Russian language into Russian grammar.

• Oppose. Two reasons:
  • It is wikipedia's tradition to split big articles into small, not vice versa. If you merge all Russian grammar into Russian grammar, you will have an article sized as a book of 500+ pages.
  • The article with such a major title must cover major topics of grammar in reasonable detail, leaving more esoteric topics to separate articles.

In fact, I was thinking to put Reduplication in Russian language into the Reduplication, article, just as it is done with numerous linguistical topics, such as Consonant mutation, Gemination and many others. But I changed my mind in the view of the resulting size of the text. `'mikka (t) 21:47, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

• Support: the Russian reduplication article is so small and has little potential to grow. I think if we're going to split up Russian grammar (which there is little reason to do so now), we shouldn't split it off into a dozen stubs and several moderate sized articles. The largest areas of Russian grammar, such as its case system, its syntax, and its verb inflection, could easily make full articles while the reduplication is practically a sidenote. AEuSoes1 22:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Exactly since it is a sidenote it does not make sense to clutter the main article with it. Only two years ago quite a few wikipedians thought there was no reason to split the whole Russian language article at all! There are over a hundred of various peculiarities of Russian language I can name right away, and putting them into one article will make it a mess for an average reader. Main article is for main topics. `'mikka (t) 23:02, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

  As for "little potential to grow", I am afraid you are mistaken. There are quite a few murky topics both foreigners and random native speakers are usually unaware. For example, how many cases do you think Russian language has? (Try to find the answer using wikipedia). I initially did not intend to write much on this topic, but since your merge proposal I have already expanded this article to twice my original text, even without nice exposition, a mere collection of facts that sit on the surface, without looking into linguistic journals. `'mikka (t) 00:12, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

By "sidenote" I mean that it's too small and insignificant to justify making an article with what should be a section. What happened two years ago is irrelevant to the discussion. Reduplication plays such a small role in Russian (it is just an intensifier) that I really don't see it expanding to that much.

By the way, the information about reduplication should be in Cyrillic and/or IPA, simply as a matter of consistency. AEuSoes1 01:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

"You don't see" is your personal problem, not a valid argment in discussin. What happened two years ago is a parallel: someone thought he already knows all about russian language and "didn't see" what the heck these 'russkies' want. Now the article has grown three times its original size. Dare to cut its insignificance in half? `'mikka (t) 01:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

It's true that the situation is similar but to somehow draw a conclusion of the appropriateness of a split or merger by comparing it to another discussion of a merger or split is oversimplification. It's obvious to us why we should split Russian grammar, phonology, and language apart since that's what is done for many other languages, not because people disagreed with it two years ago.

Furthermore, the fact that splitting is appropriate some of the time does not mean that it is appropriate all of the time. It's not obvious why there should be a separate page on a particular grammatical function that, according to the information you've put up, has only one single function: intensification of meaning. If the Russian grammar page is too large then it's much more appropriate to make a separate page on verb conjugation, the case system, or syntax, not something as trivial as reduplication.

And finally, the fact that I don't see the article expanding much isn't a "personal problem" and that kind of comment borders on a personal attack. If you disagree with the substance of my criticism (that the article doesn't have potential to grow) then you ought to do so with scholarly sourcing to demonstrate your argument. I give you the burden of proof since 1) it's easier to ask for the proof of presence than proof of absence (in this case being that of potential for greater expansion), and 2) according to Wikipedia policy: The obligation to provide a reputable source lies with the editors wishing to include the material, not on those seeking to remove it.

Now if you think that in a couple of days' time you can prove me wrong then by all means do so. There's not that much urgency. AEuSoes1 03:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, colleague, your criticism basically amounts to "little potential", "I don't see" etc., which are your personal opinions, and it is not a personal attack, but a fair description of your arguments (or, rather, absence thereof). I have already proved my point by expanding the artile three times compared to the original text by adding bare bullets only. The text may be still further expanded by adding historical evolution, detailed explanations, etc. And I leave fine wording to real experts in Russian grammar.
• Your request for reputable sources and "burden of proof" is simply ridiculous: I have already included two very scholar references.
• "Proof of absence": you are wrong again. the very article contains an example of "proof of absence", by quoting a reputable source: "There are virtually no productive syllabic or root/stem reduplication in the modern Russian language." And such kinds of "nonexistence claims" you may find in many articles on grammar in wikipedia, see, eg. Continuous and progressive aspects.
• "something as trivial as reduplication." People write whole scientific articles on this "trivial" issue. It is yet another example of your disrecpectful attitute to the topic, rather than a valid argument.
• So I can nothing but to conclude that you are simply trolling and I have no desire to continue this thread of talk. `'mikka (t) 17:31, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I apologize if I was unclear. I wasn't asking for reputable sources on the information that's already there. I'm simply pointing out that we disagree on the potential for the article and personal jabs like "that's you're personal problem", "you are simply trolling" and "you have a disrespectful attitude" don't prove anything in regards to that potential but actually expanding the page does. Simply because I have a personal opinion regarding something doesn't mean that your contradictory view isn't personal as well.

As for reduplication being trivial, I was speaking only as it pertains to Russian. Perhaps trivial isn't the right word. Minor? Something with only one function can't be that major in a particular language. I think that the information should be in Wikipedia, I just happen to disagree with you on it deserving its own article.

I won't address any more of your dizzying misdirections since, as you have said, the thread is over and I have apparantly lost the vote. While it was close (only by one vote) it was still overwhelming (twice as many people voted against as for). AEuSoes1 01:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose. My reasons are explained at Talk:Reduplication in the Russian language.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 02:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

First and Second Declensions

I'd make them into tables as I have done the rest of the article but I don't quite understand them. What does each column represent? Perhaps a scholar or native speaker can fill me in. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

There is no special significance to each of the columns; All of the columns are equal. They do not have a name, but may be named simmply by their nominative endings.--King Mir 05:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Then what is the distinguishing factor? For example, what dictates when a nominative singular gets an ending of -ий as opposed to -й or -ь? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 10:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Nominative singular is the basic form of the noun. It can be found in the dictionary and must be memorized. H. Kelm 04:24, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Huh?

Okay, let me see if I can't be clearer here.

Second declension	yellow	green	cyan
Singular
Nominative	-а	-я	-ия
Genitive	-ы	-и	-ии
Dative	-е	-е	-ии
Accusative	-у	-ю	-ию
Instrumental	-ой	-ей	-ией
Prepositional	-е	-е	-ии
Plural
Nominative	-ы	-и	-ии
Genitive	-0-	-ь	-ий
Dative	-ам	-ям	-иям
Accusative	-ы/-0-	-и / ь	-ии / ий
Instrumental	-ами	-ями	-иями
Prepositional	-ах	-ях	-иях

What words should go in the yellow, green, and cyan cells respectively? I imagine it's not male, female, and neuter since the article states that second declension nouns are mostly feminine. But I could be wrong. I'm all ears. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Whether a particular word should go in the yellow, green or cyan cell depends on its nominative ending. For example, "машина" (car) goes to the yellow column, "дядя" (uncle) goes to the green column and "конституция" (constitution) goes to the cyan one. There is no hard rule that can explain why a word ends in "-а", "-я" or "-ия". H. Kelm 08:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm Going to go a ahead and add the above table, sans the colors.--King Mir 03:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Adjective declension

Could someone verify note #1 after the table in the Russian grammar#Adjectives section? I find it very strange to see "-ое/-ого" for neuter accusative singular (since neuter forms are supposed to show nominative-accusative syncretism throughout IE). Perhaps it is more accurate to say that animate neuter nouns can combine with masculine adjectives via natural gender agreement (therefore, maybe also in the nominative)? I don't actually know any animate neuter nouns, so I can't offer any test data. CapnPrep 11:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I have edited this section based on the information I got from this Slavic languages forum. But now it looks like the declension table for neuter nouns needs to be modified to reflect the animate/inanimate distinction as well. CapnPrep 14:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

2nd noun declension

Unless I'm going blind, there don't seem to be any superscript numbers in the table for the 2nd declension of nouns, despite there being numbered notes below it describing exceptions. I'm no expert in russian grammar so I'm not going to edit it, but I would guess that either there are no significant exceptions to the endings given, or the numbers have not been attached to the relevant ending(s). Mr Poo 16:55, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

The article claims that there are 6 primary nomiative declensions, but 7 are listed. The 7th being the locative case. Following the listing, it speaks of the locative cases as a "maybe". Perhaps the locative should either be removed from the 6, or the article should refelct 7 nomitaive declenisons. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.211.143.141 (talk) 21:30, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you referring to the first line in the Nouns section "Nominal declension is subject to six cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and locative or prepositional)" ? It lists six noun cases, giving two alternate names to the 6th case. To be precise, yes, it should just say "prepositional" there, with locative explained in the following sentence. --Cubbi (talk) 00:11, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Changes

I added the Russian grammatical term in many cases, changed the order of cases N, G, D, A, I, P to suit the way cases are taught in Russia. Please discuss here if you have objections. Anatoli (talk) 20:21, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Russian case ordering

(Atitarev copied StradivariusTV's message)

Привет! I noticed you changed the ordering of cases to NGDAIL, which I understand is the ordering taught in Russia and in some English coursebooks. But for an encyclopedia it seems more elegant to present the cases in a way that groups identical desinences together. This is not a Wikipedia-only invention; the external link here uses the ordering NAGDLI, as does the online grammar here. Still others use the ordering NAGDIL, like A Comprehensive Russian Grammar by Wade and Essential Russian Grammar by Kemple. At any rate it's something that merits discussion. Strad (talk) 20:42, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind moving your message here. :) NGDAIP (ИРДВТП) is much more common and is my preferred method and I recommend it foreign learners or users, as it makes it easier to use native (Russian) resources later. I don't want to be an authority on this but let some more people decide. Note that German cases (there are only 4) are always presented in the same order: Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akkusativ). It is the case for other Slavic languages as well (+ Vocative for some languages). Anatoli (talk) 22:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

As for me, I also think, that it is better to place cases in their traditional order, rather than in order of similar desinences. This order is maintained not only in Russian and German, but Polish, Greek has the same order.--Армонд^@ 17:33, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd put my money on traditional/pedagogical order as well. What exactly is the benefit of putting them in order of similar suffixes? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a purse, and articles must be in encyclopedic style--Армонд^@ 16:42, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think an encyclopedic style is at stake here. Perhaps you could elaborate. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

As for me, the article, attached above here is the first example of such ordering of cases in Russian--Армонд^@ 16:19, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Romanizations should accompany Cyrillic

All Russian words and grammatical endings in the article are in Cyrillic. Shouldn't they be accompanied by Roman transliterations for the benefit of those who do not know the Cyrillic alphabet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.64.64.209 (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

To be quite honest, the Cyrillic alphabet can be learned in less than an hour. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.212.106.138 (talk) 03:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment..?

As a reader, I feel that all the translations of grammatical vernacular were pretty unnecessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.174.176.135 (talk) 21:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

unidirectional and multidirectional verbs of motion.

I'm learning Russian, and I'm finding it a bit difficult to comprehend the concept of unidirectional and multi-directional verbs of motion. I can find very little discussion of this concept anywhere online. (In Russian, rather than distinguishing between "come" and "go", there are two words: "идти" which means "travel on foot in one direction" and "ехать" which means "travel on foot in multiple directions/ there and back/ etc". Then they have pairs of verbs denoting the same concept except by vehicle, by flight, by swimming/sailing etc) why isn't it discussed in this article and are there any other languages with such a distinction? I think I heard that ancient Greek did. Hypershock (talk) 14:48, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

You mean ходить, not ехать. As you can see, this page is rated as a "C", which means that a lot of basic information is still missing. But your questions go beyond the scope of this talk page. I would recommend going to a language discussion site like Word Reference. CapnPrep (talk) 16:30, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Vocative case?

IAt what time in the history of the Russian/Slavonic languages did the Vocative case disappear?

Did the Russian language ever have a Vocative case? 216.99.198.244 (talk) 17:52, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

As Vocative case#Russian correctly points out, Russian has a Vocative case in current colloquial use, different from the one that was used in Old Slavonic. It misses out a somewhat outdated form of Vocative which is mentioned in the beginning of this talk page. --Cubbi (talk) 01:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Morphology vs. spelling

This whole article is all wrong, as it does not distinguish between spelling and morphology. I mean, is "ь" an ending? How about "я"? These are letters, and should not be confused with morphemes. This kind of approach is okay for elementary school pupils, but in an encyclopedic article, it presents a token of ignorance in terms of morphology...

"Irregular" verbs

First off, the verbs listed as 'irregular' might be irregular as far as first year language teaching materials are concerned, but except for есть и дать, none of the verbs listed are irregular. Yeah, a couple have stress on their infinitive ending (вести, идти), or are otherwise non-suffixed (жить), or are а-suffixed (писать), so they aren't models for forming new verbs from borrowed stems. But they're not irregular. Neither are видеть or ходить; one is -e- suffixed and another is an absolutely regular second conjugation verb. A footnote mentions palatalization, an entirely productive process in Russian; why isn't it discussed in the text instead of left out as an "irregularity"?