Talk:Russian phonology

Vowel trapezium

I have formant values of Russian vowels from Sound Pattern of Russian (1959) and would like to create an image of a vowel chart/trapezium using this information. However, there is no general formant value for these vowels. Instead, consonant vowel (pa, pʲa, va, etc) and vowel consonant (um, upʲ, up etc) sequences, as well as a few example words, are given (You can see most of the relevant appendix in the Google Preview of the book). Averaging all these together wouldn't be a good idea. Instead, we should pick an environment most representative of these vowels. Does anyone have an opinion on what might be the best choice? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

POV-Section

Dale Chock has argued in this edit summary that Bidwell (1962) is a "maverick, mistake riddled proposal" and that mention of it gives undue weight to a fringe proposal. However, there are two issues that I think complicate the matter.

1. It's my understanding, based on Stankiewicz (1962) that the analysis proposed by Bidwell (1962) is one of a number of similar analyses. While he doesn't provide full citations, Stankiewicz lists six scholars that he says make similar claims:

• Ludolf
• Olmstead
• Orenstein
• VanCampen
• Hodge
• Kuznecov

Similarly, Folejewski lists (also without full citations) of scholars who seem to implicitly adopt an analysis similar to Bidwell's:

• Trager
• Cornyn
• Karcevskij

I don't think we should remove a paragraph about something broader than Bidwell (1962) simply because of problems with Bidwell. If we had a better understanding of the place that these other scholars (as well as the ones I listed in the archives) have in the general scholarship, it might help us get a better understanding of whether mentioning this analysis really gives undue weight. I have restored the paragraph in question with a POV-section tag to draw others to this discussion.

2. Several editors have alluded (see above and in this archived discussion) to a more robust dispute amongst Russian linguists between a five-vowel analysis (prominent in Moscow schools) and six-vowel analysis (prominent in St. Petersburg) that is, whether ы represents a phoneme or an allophone. I'm not familiar enough with this dispute, but I wouldn't be surprised if the six-vowel analysis also collapses the phonemicity of hard-soft contrasts in ways similar to Bidwell and others. Again, looking into sources would help out in this regard. Either way, I don't think we have enough sourcing present in the article to back up this removal of a citation request, which is why I have restored it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 23:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

AEsos's restoration is factually invalid because he restored a mass of mistakes (names misspelled, names missing, awkward English). He did not confine himself to restoring the material that he claimed was the reason for the restoration. Accordingly, in due course his broad brush action will be undone. Dale Chock (talk) 00:11, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Oops! My bad. I've fixed it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:22, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

New reply to no. 2 above 23:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC). The commenter says "i'm not familiar enough with this dispute. Looking into sources would help." You have been editing this article for five years. You are the one who has pushed all these names in front of us -- when do you intend to "look into these sources"? . "AE" is pretending he's discussing theory. He has no understanding of the theory of any article he edits on languages or linguistics -- i've spelled this out in the talk pages of two of those other articles.

To summarize about this proposal by Bidwell ca. 1955-1960, this proposal has been a dead end for nearly half a century, nobody talks about it, so there having been eight or so other proponents 50 years ago is irrelevant. Stankiewicz's article demolished the main proponent, Bidwell. Critics at the time pointed out the inconsistency in not applying the notion to any other phonological parameter, say voicing: to claim voicing is a phoneme applied to p, t, k, f, s, ʃ. Dale Chock (talk) 07:49, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't have access to Russian-language sources. There could be English-language sources that discuss the dispute, though I haven't found any. With incomplete citations, it's hard for me to go forward in corroborating or expanding on Stankiewicz (1962). Apparently, since I have "no understanding of the theory of any article" I shouldn't be the one to do it anyway. Perhaps you could help.

I don't think we can really say what is and is not relevant until we at least try to get a broader view of the context that these sorts of claims are made. We know Bidwell specifically isn't very notable, but Lightner (1972) is. Until you or I bring any further sources that help enlighten us on the matter, I don't think it's a good idea to delete that paragraph. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:12, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

This might be a good starting point. The author points to three disputes (the phonemicity of [ɨ], that of palatalized velars, and that of long postalveolars), but doesn't mention dispute about the number of consonants. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:10, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Deletion of tables and citation requests

Per this edit, where Dale describes a table as "trivial" and "uninformative," I would have to wholeheartedly disagree. Not only does it show what kinds of clusters are possible in Russian, but it is sourced, coming from a more elaborate table in Halle (1959) that is even duplicated in Chew (2010). Remember that this project is for lay readers who may not have as intuitive an understanding about phonotactics as experts like you and me.

Also, Dale, removals of citation requests like this are inappropriate. In this case, it is a misrepresentation to say that I have requested confirmation that the phrase exists. It only takes a little bit of common sense (and also the ability to read what I wrote in the edit summary when I restored it the last time you deleted it) to know that the citation request is not for the phrase in question, which obviously exists; it is for the claim that it has a five-consonant cluster. Sources I've seen say that Russian has a maximum of four-consonant clusters, and if I felt more confident that I'd read a representative sample on Russian phonotactics I would even mark the claim with a "dubious" tag. Instead, I'm giving you (or other editors) a chance to provide sourcing that states that Russian allows five-consonant clusters. You got it from a source, didn't you? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 12:01, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Russian has initial clusters with up to 5 consonant phonemes in a single word (in accurate pronounciation of existing obscene verb "взбзднуть" ("д" is silent) and its derivatives, a well-known example fixed in dictionaries [1]), or up to 6 if preposition is included (several theoretically possible combinations like "к взбзднувшему" or "с взбзднувшим" [2]).

The longest final clusters have up to 5 consonants among occasionally used (but real) words ("арбитрств" [1] 'of arbitratorships', "петиметрств" [2] 'of dandyships', "адъюнктств" [2] 'of adjunctships'), and up to 7 consonants in potentially constructable words ("монстрств" [1] 'of monsterships').

[1] These two examples are taken from: В. Н. Топоров, "О дистрибутивных структурах конца слова в современном русском языке" // сборник "Фонетика, фонология, грамматика", М.: "Наука", 1971 (see a footnote on page 155).

[2] These are gen. pl. forms of петиметрство and адъюнктство, both listed in "Словарь современного русского литературного языка", 17 vols., 1948-1964.

Dictionaries contain several other nouns ending in 2 consonants + -ство (i.e. gen. pl. ends in 5 consoinant letters), but all they have less than 5 consonant phonemes, as they end in -дств- or -тств- where -дс-/-тс- represent a single phoneme, affricate /ts/ (also it's why "адъюнктств" is an example of 5-consonant cluster, not 6-consonant). Actually, this is a productive word-forming model, so many examples like киборгство, оркство, бобрство, кадаврство, спектакльство, октябрьство, ноябрьство etc. are quite possible (and can be found by Google in blogs and similar places). Plus Sovietisms from fiction literature like комсоргство, профоргство, парторгство...

And the last note: potentially, final consonant clusters can be further extended if the word is followed by one of vowel-free particles (б, ж, ль). -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 06:07, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

While it's true that those words and phrases are written with such clusters, the issue is whether they are pronounced with them. The article already states that potential consonant clusters are reduced. This source says (p.80) that "clusters of three or more consonants are frequently simplified in pronunciation by the deletion of one of them. So a word like чувство is pronounced [ˈtɕustvə], not [ˈtɕuvstvə]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 14:34, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, they are. At least in accurate speech. Dropping of the first "в" in "вств" is a known exception. -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 19:02, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you have a source? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 04:16, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Those two dictionaries I mentioned in "Soft ц" thread above. Only -вств-, -дств- and -тств- are mentioned. Initial "в" of -вств- is dropped in cases чувств-, здравств- and -лвств-, otherwise it is [f]. -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 11:10, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm missing something. All you've backed up is that those words/phrases exist. I'm talking about the claims you've made about how they're pronounced. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:26, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

There are two pronunciation rules related to (something)+ств. One says that -дств- and -тств- start with affricate [ts] (see Ageenko & Zarva, p. 25, or Avanesov, p. 677), another is related to -вств- (p. 27 and 677 resp.). Ageenko & Zarva are also adding here that "ф" in -фств- is not dropped. -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 19:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a copy of either dictionary. Do you think you could provide quotations and, if necessary, translation? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:17, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I can, but why? Do we cite entire paragraphs of grammar rules to support any claim? -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 22:17, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I'm more curious as to what generalizations the sources make about consonant clusters. I think you're saying that the sources argue for more than four consonants when suffixation occurs. Feel free to expand on the part of the consonant clusters section per the sources you've provided. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 23:48, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok, here is the full list of letter combinations where consonant cluster is (or in certain subcases can be) simplified, from the two dictionaries combined together (there are tiny distinctions): с(т)н, з(д)н, с(т)л, с(т)ск, н(т)к, н(д)к, н(д)ск, н(т)ск, (в)ств, р(д)ц, р(т)ц, л(н)ц. More complex transformations (where number of sounds is less than number of consonant letters, but not just dropping one of them): set of rules of type бб/пб -> [б(:)] (the dictionaries use simplified Cyrillic-based phonetical notation instead of IPA); сж/зж/жж/жд -> [ж('):]; зш/сш ->[ш:], сч/зч/жч/сщ/зщ -> [ш':], тц/дц -> [ц:], стц -> [сц], -тся/-ться -> [ц:а], -стся/-сться/-зться -> [сца], тс/дс -> [ц], тч/дч -> [ч:]. Thus, if none pattern can be applied (and there are no ь/ъ+vowel to create an extra [j]), I may conclude that number of consonant sounds = number of consonant letters. Is it an original research or just a trivial knowledge how to read words of native language? ;-) -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 00:53, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

This is in response to the message from AEsos on 12:01, 25 April 2012, regardiing documentation of various lengths of consonant clusters.

I want to open with overall comments about AEsos's editing practices. He fetishizes the criterion of sourcing, believing he is free to insert anything into Wikipedia that complies with the Reliable Source policy. This is self serving, because it's not hard to find a source for something, especially something trivially true. He disregards other criteria. He usually ignores criticisms of his edits entirely. When he doesn't ignore them, his defense is usually limited to "it's sourced" -- which is always beside the point when discussing AEsos editing Wikipedia.

AEsos's approach in editing this issue over five years has been especially goofy because of the incongruity between his making a strong (i.e., remarkable) point that Russian allows four consonants word initially, and his shining the spotlight on the unremarkable shorter clusters.

The bad thing about inserting lists (tabular or otherwise) of examples of clusters of two consonants and of three consonants is that most of the world's languages have words with "clusters" (unbroken sequences) of two consonants. It is Aspergerish to document that English, Russian, or any of thousands of other languages allow sequences of two consonants. The objection that this is a point only plain to "experts" is disingenuous. AEsos also proudly claims his examples are sourced. But you are not supposed to source points of fact which are trivial or which are common knowledge to multitudes of people (there's even a discussion saying so in the Wikipedia policies).

AEsos raises a further objection: we should not assume that the Russian spelling 'k vzglʲadu' is pronounced as written. This objection is no good, because as follows. (1) We do not need to prove that a particular Russian spelling is unrealistic just AEsos, in an attitude of linguistic chauvinism, finds it hard to believe it is realistic. What we would need to prove instead is that a Russian word is NOT pronounced as spelled. Where Russian is not pronounced as spelled, THEN it is appropriate to inform the reader. Indeed, the article already discusses multiple categories of this phenomenon. (2) Furthermore, for AEsos to raise this objection only reaffirms his ignorance of even beginning Russian. By the way, on his User talk page he discloses that he hasn't tried to learn the Russian language, he only studies how it is pronounced and spelled. This after five years of editing "Russian phonology". As I was about to say: in elementary Russian, one learns that the pronunciation of the words 'k', 's', and 'v' has to be expanded to ko, so, vo before some words, as in ko mnʲe. THIS IS INDICATED IN THE NATIVE RUSSIAN SPELLING SYSTEM.

There was a telling incident in this article in 2008. AEsos reverted a fluent speaker on points of vocabulary and grammar! He insisted on a bogus gloss (gorbunʲja means 'hunchback (agentive)') based on a bogus general grammar claim (that an "agentive" meaning is indicated by a suffix -ʲja). Aesos himself originated this misinformation (Revision as of 22:30, 25 May 2008)). When another editor corrected this on 16 Sept (the word actually means 'female hunchback'), AEsos, in act of complacency and recklessness, reverted, inventing a bogus grammar claim: "female would be gorbuna". Latin and Spanish derive feminine nouns with -a, but Russian doesn't. Only when a native speaker snapped, "Consult a dictionary!" two days later did AEsos fall into line. (Readers can see all this for themselves in the article history.) By the way, this happened at the same time that AEsos had been reverted on basic spelling (e.g., he was ignorant of the simple fact that in Russian spelling, every infinitive ends in a soft sign, except the handful than end in -i!). Aside from ignorance of Russian, let us note one point of ignorance of linguistics. As a linguistic matter, it is makes little sense to conceive of there being an agentive form of a noun denoting a personal quality, like 'tall', 'blond', 'hunchback'. Dale Chock (talk) 07:37, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you don't like the criterion of reliable sourcing. It's kinda the thing here. See WP:RS

If you took a look at Halle (1959) or Chew (2010), you would find that Halle (1959) meant to be exhaustive in the types of clusters possible in Russian. Of the four-consonant types, he said there were only two words that even exhibited such clusters. If there were more four-consonant examples to make a typology, I would have duplicated those in a third table.

It may be "Aspergerish" to exhaustively display such clusters, but that is equally true of the sources used and irrelevant to whether it should be included. If you really believe that knowledge of the types of two- and three-consonant clusters in Russian are common knowledge, then you are not a good judge of what is and is not common knowledge.

As I've said above, I question that the given phrases are pronounced as written because of the literature I've read on Russian phonology that explicitly states a four-consonant maximum and that potential clusters are reduced. I've provided two sources that say as much. It's possible that such sources are incorrect, represent one particular dialect over others, or are simply oversimplistic. But until you or others show that this is the case with other sourcing, I see the inclusion of these phrases as original research not worthy of inclusion. This is the point of a {{citation needed}} tag and removing it is disruptive.

Teasing me on my inability to speak Russian will get you nowhere. I don't pretend to speak the language and will, of course, make mistakes from time to time. In the case above, I was most likely simply duplicating an error from the source. Perhaps you should scour your library to actually provide resources rather than scour the last 6 years for editing mistakes I've made; if you didn't have a habit of doing the latter, I'd even say it was beneath you.— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:18, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

There are dozens of words with initial 4-consonant clusters. Actually, almost all combinations вз+(б,г,д)+(л,р) and вс+(п,т,к)+(л,р) are realized. After prepositions к and с, clusters expand to 5 consonants.

There are hundreds of words with final consonant+ство (unstressed), even if potentially problematic -дство, -тство and -вство are excluded. Declension generates gen. pl. -ств from unstressed nom. sg. -ство, without any other changes and without exceptions. No pronunciation rule can fit them to drop anything. Does one need to cite the entire list to prove this?

Топоров deals with pronunciation, not just with number of letters (his examples are арбитрств(о) and монстрств(о)).

For петиметрство, there is no matching simplification rule. For адъюнктство, the only rule is тс -> affricate /ts/.

For взбздн(уть), yes, "д" drops in pronunciation (I fixed the case above). Still 5 consonants remain, or 6 if after prepositions.

I suppose that your "4-consonant maximum" rule was based on a limited material, as the extensions belong to rare or marginal words. (However, I will not say that pattern "к взгляду" is too rare in modern language.) -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 22:17, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The sources I've cited may be focusing on individual words... I'm not sure. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 23:48, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

(1) Wikipedia readers indeed do not have in their heads lists of consonant clusters. The point is that even readers interested in Russian phonology, the bulk of them don't care to see such lists, and they are justified in that disinterest. They would realize such lists are trivial because they are non-Aspergerish.

(2) It is invalid to compare a Wikipedia article to the professional literature. In a work meant only for specialists, or in a reference grammar, it might be reasonable to list consonant clusters, for the sake of a tedious completeness that is only of value to grammarians of, in this case, Russian, or to linguists. That is not what Wikipedia is suitable for.

(3) In this article and others, AEsos has a record of writing without having done enough research (as in the immediate example). Moreover, he sometimes makes things up (as in the immediate example), sometimes distorts quotes. This raises the question: what will turn up when we inspect his citations from his two chief sources (Halle; Jones and Ward)? Dale Chock (talk) 05:53, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

For goodness' sake, already caught one. Where this editor was exemplifying types of clusters, e.g., consonant-consonant-liquid, CCL, where the example words include the words meaning 'squeak' and 'camel', an insertion he made five years ago, in 2007, he apparently didn't know the difference between a morpheme and a word. All these examples are morpheme internal! When you abandon that restriction, then even in Romance languages, clusters of four consonants are numerous: English construct, Spanish construir. Or, heartbreak, with /-rtbr-/. By now, even this editor knows the difference between a morpheme and a word, yet he didn't notice his 2007 oversight during this month's edit disputes. Perusal leads me to doubt that he has made more misquotes from this source (Halle 1959). I did, however, find two places where he cited the wrong page at least, if not the wrong work altogether. Dale Chock (talk) 10:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, there we go. I think we're more in harmony now. I've edited the section to be more clear about what the tables present. The Bickel & Nichols find is a good one, though the claim about five consonant clusters is still uncited (this source only backs up that the phrase exists, which I've told you several times is not the issue). I've restored the fact tag with a reword that should clarify the claim that needs citation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:29, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

This is a dishonest reply because it pretends to be on point when it isn't, and because AEsos lacks the guts to acknowledge error. He was totally in the wrong, and unintelligently so. Since 2007 he's been confusing word roots with words, reading into Halle 1959 something that wasn't there. About clusters of five, I've already explained that: the spelling is to be taken at face value. It is irrational to call for confirmation, and this has already been exhaustively explained. But if AEsos were smarter, he would have noticed an answer in Halle. Dale Chock (talk) 05:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

So the point is that I made a mistake? Got it. Now let's get back on topic. If you want to talk to me about what an awful editor I am, there's a place for that and it's not here.

The other editor and I have provided enough sourcing to show that spelling in Russian can't always be taken at face value. All you have to do is find a source that backs up your claim. That shouldn't be too hard if what you claim is as obvious as you say. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 14:10, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Consonant clusters

Can anybody provide a list of initial/final consonant clusters of English? I think it would be more interesting to demonstrate only those Russian ones that have no English counterparts. (Say, тк- or рт- would be more interesting than тр-). -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 04:07, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

See English phonology#Phonotactics. Emphasizing what is rare or impossible for English speakers would be enlightening, but I don't think we should eliminate mention of the kinds that English speakers could produce. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Going into detail demonstrating permissible consonant clusters is a superficial, tedious, impractical exercise. Outside of a publication for specialists, I can imagine two motivations for pursuing this exercise. (1) One sincerely disagrees strongly that it is a superficial, tedious, pointless exercise. This shows one's poor academic judgement. (2) One is relegated to this exercise because one isn't sophisticated enough to report on and discuss more substantial issues. Dale Chock (talk) 05:05, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The English table does seem a bit excessive. I think we can limit ourselves to simple generalizations rather than an exhaustive list in the case of Russian. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:30, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding edits done just within the hour. AEsos has freshly restored POV content that is POV because (1) it overemphasizes morphemes over words; (2) it goes into detail illustrating points that linguists find nonnotable; (3) it reflects AEsos's prejudices.

Number (1) is due to his misunderstanding of the subject dating back to early 2008, when he inserted statements about permissible consonant sequences in Russian words citing Halle 1959. In the four ensuing years, nobody corrected AEsos that Halle meant morphemes, not words. (Of course, in Russian, as in English, many morphemes, like 'dog, tree, talk', can be whole phonological words.) AEsos was giving the misinformation during four years that sequences of four consonants were rare in Russian words because he was ignorant of the meaning of 'morpheme', which is 'word root'. In English, there are many words with four consonants in a row, like 'heartbreak' or 'construct'; note the sequences '-rtbr- and '-nstr'. In fact, in English these sequences are possible within a single phonological word due to compounding of whole words ('heart' plus 'break') or derivation (the affix morpheme 'con-' plus the lexical morpheme '-struct'). This leads us to the relevant point that the same statements are true for Russian. There are LOTS of quadruple consonant clusters in Russian due to affixation or to word compounding. On the other hand, as stated in the article, Russian has only two roots which have four consonants in a row. AEsos dwells on restrictions within morphemes, which are of less significance to linguists than restrictions within words. And he is waging an edit war to keep dwelling on morphemes. He's imposing POV. Morphemes and words usually have different restrictions as to sound structure. In Spanish, for example, words almost never can end in two consonants, and they certainly cannot in two obstruents (fricatives and stops), like in 'want' and 'list' in English. However, Spanish has at least hundreds of morphemes that end in pairs of obstruents, like 'cant-' and 'list-' in words 'canto' and 'listo'. Moreover, as the previous two Spanish words show, the pair '-st-' can freely occur in Spanish words, just not at the end of a word.

Point number (2) is about his two tables, (with example words) of permissible consonant pairs and consonant trios in Russian morphemes. To linguists, this material is trivial, therefore, AEsos is confirming his lack of expertise. Among the world's languages having sequences of two consonants is an ordinary phenomenon, totally nonnotable. What's notable is languages that prohibit two consonants in a row. Moreover, as regards categories of consonant pairs and consonant trios, it is utterly ordinary for them to include 'l, r, w, y' (to use English spelling). What's notable is consonant trios where all three consonants are stops or fricatives.

Point number (3) is about AEsos's insistence on demanding a citation for the quintuple sequence /kvzglʲ/, i.e., that this is pronounced as spelled. Contrary to what he would have us believe, Russian spelling shows Russian pronunciation, except for as noted in reference works. The reference words note MANY exceptions, many of which this article already cites. AEsos's contributions to three articles, including this one, have been discussed ad infinitum on talk pages including this one, and have been proven full of misinformation and lazy copy editing, e.g., where he misspells things and doesn't catch it for four years. But addressing this specific disagreement with him: he doesn't make the same sourcing demand for shorter consonant sequences, in Russian or English. That establishes the English centeredness of his demand. It also proves his failure to notice what all these sources tell him. He cites Cubberley, Halle, Jones & Ward copiously, plus he dabbles in specialist journals. He has inserted dozens of citations. How has he failed to notice where they say that spellings of four or five consonants to start off a word are phonetically unrealistic? The answer is that they don't say it. So for that additional reason -- i.e., the experts offer no admonitions in this regard -- he has no business demanding for this insertion to be sourced. Dale Chock (talk) 23:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I have called you to cite the claim that Russian allows for consonant clusters greater than four consonants. While you have addressed this by removing the citation request, it seems as though the anon has found a source that implies seven-consonant clusters in the syllable coda are permissible (though I'm not sure if he or the source calls these "theoretical"). There is still nothing that shows that clusters greater than four consonants are permissible in the syllable onset. In my most recent round of edits, I have found enough sourcing that I feel confident that four consonants is the maximum for the syllable onset. As such, I have replaced the citation request with a "dubious" tag. I don't have to tell you not to remove such tags before the issue is resolved here, do I? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:09, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Aesos wrote, "No, I'm more curious as to what generalizations the sources make about consonant clusters." He wrote that 23:48, 28 April 2012 (UTC). Why is he still curious when he has been reading "the sources" since 2007?

The answer to the question stated by Aesos 16:09, 3 May 2012 was given by me in the very paragraph that Aesos is replying to, 23:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC) -- plus in the next to last paragraph of 07:37, 28 April 2012. Why's he still asking? Any spelling not mentioned by the grammarians of the Russian language, not subjected to "buts", is fit to go into this article. Under Wikipedia policies, Aesos is not free to obstruct it. By substituting his skepticism for the conclusions of all these sources, sources he's already read, he is committing editing violations. It is WP:SYNTH for him to overgeneralize from a report to the effect that "many clusters are frequently simplified" to proceed to fact-tag all consonant clusters he finds incredible.

Aesos wrote, "As I've said above, I question that the given phrases are pronounced as written because of the literature I've read on Russian phonology that explicitly states a four-consonant maximum and that potential clusters are reduced. I've provided two sources that say as much. . . ." 15:18, 28 April 2012 (UTC) But these statements he inserted five years ago in 2007 were a bone-headed misunderstanding. He MISINTERPRETED the literature (particularly Halle 1959), as I brought to light above, 10:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC). Nevertheless, ever since he's been reverting as persistently as ever. Dale Chock (talk) 12:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Still no source, eh? I can wait. I figure it's probably finals time for you, so three weeks should be enough time to find a source. Good luck. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 17:39, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Aha, the wind is loud, how can an Aesuos hear other people talking over the roaring wind? Yes, the wind, and the trains outside your window, uh huh. Your experts are satisfied with the spelling, the experts in all those books you hold right side up and turn the pages of. An Aeusoes can obstruct one or two people at a time. So we will wait and see whoever else may join in. That will take time, quite some time. Dale Chock (talk) 21:21, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Per WP:CHALLENGE: "Any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation"

Per WP:BURDEN: "Editors might object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references."

Per documentation at {{citation needed}}: "Where there is some uncertainty about its accuracy, most editors are willing to wait about a month to see whether a citation can be provided."

Since most editors see a month as a fair amount of time to be given to provide attribution to disputed statements, three weeks from now (which would be more than a month from when I first first placed a citation request) seemed to me like more than enough time to provide attribution.

I must apologize, as it seems (from the above post and its edit summary) that you feel like this three-week window is unjustified. What do you feel would be fair? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:14, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Two days ago, Aesos's great Wikipedia buddy advised him to take his disputes to the talk page. That advice didn't register, we see now, because he's still talking past my arguments on article substance, the content of sources or insertions. Almost everything he ever says is just about citation procedures. At the moment, he also persists in the approach of manipulativeness and aggression, bringing us chapter two of a petulant fiction that I really accept the validity of the demand for a citation. In the last week, I've had occasion to note at WP:AN/I (Archive 750) and AN/EW that Aesos hardly ever discusses my arguments about insertions and deletions. I said there I've written 4 or 8 times in the way of substantive dialog as he has. The closest he has come to engaging with my arguments on article substance is to now cite WP:CHALLENGE. WP:CHALLENGE misses a contingency, apparently in a failure of envisioning. One of his standard tactics of evasion is to falsely shift burden of proof. My apparent "claim" is something that Russianists themselves take for granted, while he is imposing his personal doubt of a Russian spelling, which is an act of original research. Cleverly, he's not inserting his OR, but rather imposing it by illogically demanding a source for someone else's insertion. I am repeating myself. Dale Chock (talk) 13:20, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

How could I, in a post dated May 7, have been able to react to a post dated May 9?

Anyway, it's clear that you believe that the claim in question is obvious, a position akin to that taken at WP:BLUE. Neither that essay nor the one at WP:NOTBLUE provide me any further blanket policy statements that I can use to convince you otherwise. It is up to me, you are saying, to make the case that doubt should be given to the claim in question. Correct? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:58, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Query for 68.127.102.86

People usually edit Wikipedia outside of a Wikipedia account because they don't expect to participate at length in any one article, or because they want to be naughty or disruptive. Since neither of these describes your participation, I wonder why you haven't created an account at Wikipedia after a couple of dozen or so edits over nearly one month. Although a few of your remarks are constructive, it seems overall like a waste of time to reply to, or try to build on, contributions and comments by someone who doesn't even commit to being an accountable member of the community. I'm curious what you think. Dale Chock (talk) 05:13, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

It is inappropriate to use an article talk page to discuss off-topic issues. If you would like to discuss something with the anon, I recommend you leave a message on their talk page. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:56, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

To not discuss the pronunciation of a word, the Russian word for 'to rust'

Until recent weeks, the article devoted many citations to a single point: which syllable gets the stress in the infinitive of the word for 'to rust'? These footnotes documented that the speakers are split on whether the first syllable or the second.

It turns out this bloated insertion arose from a lingering emotional state that started in 2008. Editor AEsos provided a list of examples to illustrate a category of morphophonological alternation: hard and soft consonants. One example involved this infinitive. At some point, AEsos reverted a native speaker on the pronunciation of this word: specifically, AEsos insisted the word is not pronounced as the native speaker claimed. What a scandalous act! Well, it happens that this word has alternative pronunciations among Russians. So it would also be wrong to claim there is but one correct pronunciation. One day (18 Sep 2008), the native speaker fixed the bad edit. Anyway, ever since, AEsos has been accumulating dictionary citations in order to prove that there are alternative stress patterns. Just one source would do. Well, also in order to prove that one of the pronunciations has been gaining favor with the decades--a point which is equally useless in this particular article.

Originally, I modified this discussion only by reducing the number of dictionaries cited. But actually, it is a poor idea to dwell on sporadic unpredictable or irregular words. Since this particular phenomenon is trivial and also is not invoked to prove any other point in the article, and because of finding out the motivation for all the citations, I have deleted it. Dale Chock (talk) 11:28, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes, I remember that dispute. As you can see here, the other editor and I discussed the matter cordially and came to a quick agreement on what to do.

The problem with deleting the example entirely is that the list is introduced as "the different types of alternations" not "some" types. In other words, the list is meant to be exhaustive. In this case, the word pair shows an alternation between an adjective and a corresponding infinitive. Perhaps you or the anon can come up with a different example. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:52, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Tons of them. The most similar ones to ржавый/ржаветь are крова́вый/крова́веть and пра́вый/праве́ть (two examples are fully parallel to those two variants of stress in ржаветь). -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 08:39, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Great! I've added the first pair, though I couldn't find what крова́веть means. Also, I've added a new information in the consonant cluster section but am in need of some examples (marked by the {{example needed}} template. Do you think you could help fill those out? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 18:18, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I just realized that I had originally included more examples than are there presently. Since Dale has thinned these out a bit, and since we don't have to repeat Lightner's exhaustiveness, I've changed how the list is introduced to reflect that there are other types of morphological changes that lead to hard/soft alternations. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 01:29, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Hypocritical deletions of extra examples or of extra description

I have just restored glosses inserted by at 13:12 30 April 2012 and 10:52 1 May 2012 by Special:Contributions/68.127.102.86. The deletions were done by User:Aeusoes1 at 15:25 1 May with the edit summary, "glosses don't need to be exhaustive". We're talking about a mere nine instances where "68.127.102.86" used 2 to 4 words instead of one word. This is a disgrace, for an ensconced editor to hurry (it was with only a day's delay) to throw water on concise, helpful additions by a new editor. The new editor at least insinuates that he/she is fluent in spoken Russian, which would be a big enhancement to the production of this article.

I consider these deletions an act of hypocrisy on the part of User:Aeusoes1 because since 2008 he has indulged in excesses in exemplification and in sourcing.

(1) He cited 62 instances in a row (in the form of a table) of the alternation between 'e' and 'o'. (2) He cited 17 instances in a row of hard-soft paired consonant alternations. (3) As documented in a section above during this week, he compiled an excessive number of citations of dictionaries over a period of years just to prove that one particular word can be pronounced two ways, and his motivation for this miniproject was he had told a native speaker that speaker's own pronunciation was wrong.

That was as of 27 March 2012. I myself have since thinned these excesses. Dale Chock (talk) 17:57, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

What, exactly, is your point? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 18:00, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

On 6 May 2012, User talk:aeusoes1 left a long response about these glosses on my user talk page. He didn't explain why not here. From perusing both this page and that response, it doesn't seem like he repeated the parts of that response on this page. That is really something. More than once, he has suggested that a remark I have placed on an article talk page belongs elsewhere. Whether he's right or wrong about that, here I have him NOT placing on an article talk page a comment that cannot be construed any other way than that it is about the insertions in the article! You wonder whether it was a slipup, that he meant to post it here. Anyway, I won't be reading that comment on my talk page. I will read those remarks if they're posted here. Dale Chock (talk) 05:08, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, you seem to have a mistaken understanding of some of our talk page guidelines. You might want to take a look at WP:TPO, which says that you are free to delete comments on your talk page but such removals are taken as proof that you have read what was written.

I had posted in your talk page because the discussion was about issues that go a bit beyond the subject matter of this page. It also seemed, from your missing response to my question (dated 18:00, 3 May 2012), that this thread was a dead end; you've certainly abandoned enough threads midstream to have me think this was another instance. If you feel more comfortable discussing the matter here, you have my permission to move the comments into this section. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 17:01, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

About "к взгляду", personally for Dale Chock

"На месте глухих согласных перед звонкими (кроме [в]) произносятся соответствующие звонкие".

Avanesov's pronunciation guide in "Орфоэпический словарь русского языка" (Borunova, Vorontsova, Yes'kova, 1983), p. 670.

Apologies are expected. -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 08:12, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

But hermitlike unregistered user, you failed to notice this passage in our article, under Phonological processes:

"/v/ and /vʲ/ are unusual in that they seem transparent to voicing assimilation; in the syllable onset, both voiced and voiceless consonants may appear before /v(ʲ)/ . . . When /v(ʲ)/ precedes and follows obstruents, the voicing of the cluster is governed by that of the final segment (per the rule above) so that voiceless obstruents that precede /v(ʲ)/ are voiced if /v(ʲ)/ is followed by a voiced obstruent (e.g. к вдове [ɡ vdɐˈvʲɛ] 'to the widow') . . . ."

attributed to Lightner 1972. This fact is reinforced by Halle (1959:64):

"Note that {v} and {v,} play no independent role. Everything transpires as if {v} and {v,} had been absent; e.g., мог войти [mokvajt,'i] ... мог вернуть, [mokv,ern'ut,] ..., but мог вздохнуть, [mogvzdaxn'ut,]".

That is, in the last case г = [g]; or to put it another way: мог вздохнуть is not pronounced мок вздохнуть. Obviously, the great Avanesov you cite left out an important exception.

From your earliest contributions on this page, you seem to be someone who knows Russian, but doesn't know grammar or linguistics. Here we see that you have trouble recognizing this language you apparently know so well when it is filtered through indirect representations. But please continue to help us with the occasional translation. Dale Chock (talk) 04:00, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

As it usually happens, the truth is in between. Both of us were not fully right (my personal experience supports [k] взгляду, [k] вдове). And what I did just found (many thanks to Google books' database!) in an academic source (М. В. Панов, "Русская фонетика", М., 1967, p. 87):

...наблюдение показывает, что перед группами [вб], [вд], [вз] и т. д. у одних говорящих по-русски происходит «озвончение» глухих, у других его не происходит (т. е. у одних невозможны сочетания «глухой согласный + [в] или [в'] + звонкий согласный», а у других возможны). Это — случай, когда «норма... состоит в отсутствии нормы» (Л. В. Щерба). Объяснение очевидно: эти сочетания редкостны, ведь говорится обычно не к вдове, под вздутием, от взвода, а ко вдове, подо вздутием, ото взвода. На стыке же полнозначных слов (идет вдова) вообще законы озвончения менее строги, чем в середине слова...
(My note: the "evident explanation" is not correct, as the Google books' statistics is strictly opposite. Especially in what relates to от(о) взвода: more than 4000 usages of от взвода vs only three (just three, not three thousands) ото взвода, and two of these three are from Panov himself and from a citation of his book.)

So, the observed pronunciation is dual. However, two pronunciation dictionaries make no special exception for this case, thus we have to implicitly suppose that the nearest general rule must be applied (I've cited it above), i.e. the prescribed pronunciation is rather [kvz...] than [gvz...]. -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 06:26, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Broken English ("nearest"), impossible to make sense of this. As for this Panov, what you think he thinks would be a big exception in 70 years of research on Russian phonology, therefore he is not the default choice. I cited Halle 1959, who is classic in the field (which is not to say that everything he says is guaranteed correct). Here's an unpublished paper by Padgett, ca. 2001: "But like a sonorant [сонорный, i.e., /m, n, r, l/], [the phoneme /v/] does not trigger voicing assimilation . . . . The basic facts of Russian voicing assimilation have been well described (Avanesov 1956, Jakobson 1956, Halle 1959, among many others). The best known treatments of them in the recent generative tradition are Hayes (1984) and Kiparsky (1985)." http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/528-0702/528-0702-PADGETT-0-0.PDF

The first three were leading authorities in older Russian phonology. The latter two are leading authorities in general phonology from 1970 to at least 2000. Avanesov, Jakobson (Moscow, 1896), and Kiparsky are native speakers (Kiparsky was born and raised abroad, but his father was a Russian Slavicist). Halle and Kiparsky were Jakobson's students. It is ridiculous to suppose all these Russian speakers and linguists missed something M.V. Panov noticed. The paper by Padgett, who is a specialist in Russian phonology, examines some phenomena which are controversial among the specialists. But the phenomenon we are discussing is not controversial. Even if you have understood Panov's opinion perfectly, the most you can insist on is to report his contrarian opinion. Dale Chock (talk) 13:58, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Friends provided me with a wonderful link: there is a possibility to search through multimedia samples in the "National Corpus of the Russian language" (http://ruscorpora.ru/search-murco.html) -- just type, say, "к вз*" (without quotes) in the first input field, and there are 4 related short fragments of Soviet/Russian movies ready (with 7 occurrences of "к вз..."). All cases contain [kvz], not [gvz]. Also, youtube.com has about 10 different performings of the popular song "Огромное небо" (from 1960s to recent years), with the fragment "И вздрогнул от взрыва берёзовый лес" (~1:50 from the beginning); all performers sing [tvz], not [dvz]. -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 18:45, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Troublemaking citation formatting

To the unregistered new editor, 68.127.102.86, who has been inserting a whole lot of footnotes in the last few hours. Your format is out of compliance with Wikipedia style. Therefore, these edits are going to create a lot of extra work for fellow editors to rectify them. A first stop for learning footnote and bibliography style is WP:Cite. See also WP:Cite book, WP:Cite journal, WP:Cite article, etc.

Beyond formatting of dates, pages and author names, the tone of your wording in footnotes is less encyclopedic than it should be. Phrases like "see" are usually considered too redundant in Wikipedia style. In general, your style is an old fashioned wordier style, which is out of place here. It is even more outdated in having the year late in the citation. The correct sequence in the bibliography is author, year, title.

It is preferable not to put bibliographic citations in footnotes. Instead, just author, year, and page (or chapter or section).

I note that you do not reply to my justifications for edits and reverts stated in edit summaries or on the Talk page. You do not match my reasons with your own, including in your edit summaries. This abruptness makes you edits more liable to being reverted. For example, you insist on talking about "the names of the letters", but the name of Ы is not the bare vowel, in contrast to the case with И. This makes your claim seem to be in disregard of the facts. Another example is your insistence that the Russian education ministry teaches six vowels down to the present, but as you persistently add sources, these additions persistently do not include sources that confirm present day practice. Dale Chock (talk) 13:10, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I cannot understand your position. I make a statement. You remove it with an extremely long comment not related to the matter. I restore it with the reference and citation. You say that this is bad/obsolete/isolated reference. I add more references. You say that they are superfluous. Is it a constructive behaviour?

Do you not trust the dictionaries where letter Ы has name [ы]?

Do you think that 2007 is too far from the present day practice?

And about reference style. Why to make two-stage referencing (text -> footnote -> bibliography item) if a book is used only once? Moreover, if N sources support the same claim, why to produce N footnotes + N bibliography items, instead of just one footnote? And where to place citations from sources in your system? -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 13:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

If there's a problem with the anon's citations, we can bring it to the talk page, but snapping at a new user for not having a sophisticated understanding of citation conventions is a bit bitey.

And, per the name of ы, I can vouch from personal experience that [ɨ] is indeed a possible name for the letter, although it sounded more like [ɯi]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 14:22, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

About the 2007 reference. You added it a about an hour after the 1951 and 1970 references. As I remember, in the meantime I started editing, while multitasking. I did not discover your later insertion of the 2007 work.

When I was taught Russian, the letter name we were taught was yerɨ. Even such a long time ago, yes maybe there were two names in use in Russia; but I learned Russian in America, and my teacher was neither a native speaker nor was he a non-Russian Soviet (although he had visited Russia twice). There are statements you could insert at Wikipedia that every native speaker would agree with. But you have to consider that we readers are hardly any of us native Russians. We usually have to judge the reliability of the content based on citations, not based on personal knowledge, and we do not have Russian acquaintances we can run out and ask. If this article had the level of participation that there were many Russian speakers jumping in whenever a wrong statement were inserted, we might be able to use fewer footnotes--we'd let those readers catch the mistakes.

About footnotes, the system you use was formerly standard, and even today it is common in some fields of academia and in books for a mass audience. However, it is not suited to Wikipedia. The most important points of our system is that there should be a list of works consulted (most Wikipedians call it "bibliography") and that this list be complete. It's bad for it to be incomplete (which is the result of listing some sources only in footnotes). And it's not at all acceptable that all sources be in footnotes only because that's not an alphabetized list and it is not a list were each entry is uniformly laid out on the page for easy scanning with the eye. As to why not be economical and collect all sources that were used only once and that bear on the same point: this is a small saving which gets undone in editing Wikipedia. It gets undone because (1) Wikipedia is a forum where the article is constantly being revised (changed). When the sources are not all displayed separately, they, and the footnotes, are harder to count. (2) The editing is done in modern fashion, i.e., in some markup language. The plain text is interspersed with tags, data field labels, etc. When you are editing marked up text, it becomes hard to make sure you saw everything.

Another issue is that a source is often cited more than once throughout the article. You mention the case where N sources bear on a single point. But some of those N sources may be cited again for different claims. With Wikipedia, we enjoy a different editing economy, especially when you use a markup technique other than : in the list of footnotes, each source is named just once, but each occurrence in the text is indicated with a linked superscript letter. Dale Chock (talk) 05:01, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Name of Ы. Last time "еры" was used in school in: С. Г. Бархударов и С. Е. Крючков, Учебник русского языка, ч. 1. Фонетика и морфология. Для 5-го и 6-го классов средней школы, изд. 7, М., 1960 (page 4). The next edition (изд. 8, переработанное, М., 1961) has "ы" (page 20). But the name "ы" itself is known since mid-19th c. (in "sound method" of education proposed by Konstantin Ushinsky). -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 08:21, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Bundling of footnotes. I discovered that Wikipedia enables this while retaining separate hyperlinks. I restored your bundles. Dale Chock (talk) 10:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

About source request for initial 4-consonant clusters

I propose do not mention Ostapenko there. She lists some examples (maybe most frequently used ones) and adds "etc." I collected the full set from common dictionaries. With the exception of two occasionalisms, the words are quite common; I believe, any big enough dictionary contains them (or at least similar words with the same prefixes+roots).

The two occasionalisms were found by Google, namely:

• встлеть, two independent occurences in form "встлеет": http://www.stihi.ru/2011/05/08/375 and http://litprom.ru/thread41528.html (the second text can be found under several addresses). Made from "затлеть" where prefix за- was replaced with a high-style one, воз-/вос-/вз-/вс-, cf. закричать/вскричать, загореться/возгореться, запретить/воспретить etc.
• вздлить, one occurence http://litfest.ru/publ/v_zashhitu_nasekomykh/218-1-0-6466 (the last verse; it is written with non-standard spelling, but the particular word is orthographically correct and meaningful). The word was made from "продлить" with a similar replacement (про- -> воз-/вос-/вз-/вс-, cf. прославить/восславить, прогреметь/взгреметь). The difference is not only in style register (as for за- vs воз-), but in nuances of meaning (воз- refers more to the beginning of the process, and the process itself is rather one-moment action than a continuous one).

I'm not sure whether these links are important enough to be placed in the article. -- 68.127.102.86 (talk) 15:22, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I missed the "etc." I've moved the citation up and removed the citation tags.

The claim in her article is "It is interesting that all the clusters that contain four consonants begin with the vz-/fs- (regressive voice assimilation) combination." while this article currently says "The source of many of these clusters are lexical words that begin with the prefix вз-/вс-." Technically, she doesn't say the combination is a prefix, though I don't know if that would be common knowledge to a native speaker or not. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Misquoting of Cubberley p. 82

Twice this week Aesos has been reverted with the allegation by me that a passage is a misquotation of the source. In arrogance, this other editor has blithely restored the disputed passages without explaining how his insertion does not constitute misinformation.

The source, Cubberley p. 82, is unfortunately ambiguous: one cannot be sure of his intended meaning. But logically that means you cannot assume the strong interpretation, as Aesos does. The problem passage in the source is:

"Here we have remnants of older simplifications which occurred as the language shifted from open- to closed-syllable structure. Currently, here as elsewhere, the language is undergoing spelling influence which resists simplification. Some of the groups and words involved are:

(1) by dissimilation." [Here, Cubberley lists some spelled consonant clusters that retain the reduced pronuncation, others that are being "restored" by some speakers.]

"(2) by deletion." [Here, Cubberley lists some words spelled '-vstv-' that retain the simplified pronunciation, others that are being "restored". But, then he lists seven clusters of three or more consonants, which are all dentals or mostly dentals, that underwent simplification, and for none of these seven does Cubberley report any counterexamples.]

Aesos's confusion is to have wrongly extended the scope of the early part of the quotation. Aesos created "counterexamples" that are not clearly affirmed by Cubberley, let alone stated by Cubberley, and it's possible that Cubberley would reject them. Logically, you can't cite a source in support of an insertion that the source does not clearly support. Once again, this other editor misunderstands what he has read--and once again, he doesn't bother to refute arguments against his insertions. In this case, he needs to find an unambiguous source. Dale Chock (talk) 06:12, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

You are right to challenge the information, as it is either drawing from another source or synthesizes personal experience with Cubberley's "the language is undergoing spelling influence which resists simplification."

However, it's only fair to give editors a reasonable amount of time to back up their claims. It's also fair practice to retain disputed text in the article with citation requests. This is why I restored the text in question with a fact tag.

Importantly, the editor who added this was the anonymous user who has been active in this talk page, not myself. This is not the first time that you have mistakenly attributed edits to me and I ask that you be careful about this. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:55, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Just to be clear, we're talking about the sentence "In certain cases, dropped consonants are restored in more modern pronunciations under the influence of written form." Right? Your most recent edit also removed other content and I just want to make sure that you're not referring to something else. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 22:33, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Something you inserted here at 13:55 9 May 2012, ". . . give editors a reasonable amount of time to back up their claims" is misapplied to the case. He did give a source and the source does not support his insertion. Now, I have to hand it to you, your indulgent scenarios to account for this are plausible. However, I think the stronger explanation than either of those is that he is relying only on Cubberley p. 82, in which case his insertion is a misquotation of the source. Being so is strong evidence that the claim is all in his mind. Perhaps you have covertly gone a step further and adopted a "give the benefit of the doubt" standard. That would be inappropriate. You seem to generally favor "one size fits all" prescriptions; that is, exceptionless rules. Another consideration is to judge an editor's particular insertion not in isolation, but comparing it to their previous participation. This editor is intellectually erratic and his reasoning is sometimes facile. Moving on, I apologize for misattributing his insertion to you. Dale Chock (talk) 11:39, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Those are fair points regarding the edit in question. I happen to interpret the anon's edits a bit differently. Considering that his other edits made use of two other sources, I supposed that he may have drawn from them instead while maintaining the same examples. It's not a big deal either way, since the anon can always reintroduce the edits with proper attribution. I believe we are in agreement on this point. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:47, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

In response to the concluding remark at 13:55 9 May 2012, claiming I have mistakenly attributed edits to Auesos more than once. Prove it. I anticipate it's possible, but we can't take your report at face value. I don't remember it happening multiple times. I do remember the incident when you vehemently denied the existence of a certain statement in an article -- i.e., claiming not merely than you didn't write it, but that nobody did, since it wasn't there -- and then you zipped to the opposite stance of informing me, with a smirk, that yes you did insert it. Dale Chock (talk) 14:44, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

As I mentioned in your talk page last week, you attributed the excessive citations of a particular Russian word to me when I had not made those edits. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:47, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I've reverted prior to the edit war. Deleting citation requests is not acceptable.

Go ahead and restore the changes that you both agree on. As for the rest, please settle it here. — kwami (talk) 23:12, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

"Deleting citation requests is not acceptable" is a precipitate, uninformed opinion. See multiple contributions under the above section, Consonant clusters. Dale Chock (talk) 10:55, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Five or more consonants in the syllable onset

There is currently a dispute in the article, one that is spread throughout this talk page. This dispute has modified over time as new information is uncovered and edits to the article have accumulated. It is not my intention to document the evolution of the dispute but, rather, focus on the current state of editors' positions. It is my hope that, by centralizing the discussion in one thread, involved editors are more likely to respond to each other and that outside editors considering involvement will not feel the burden of having to read all the conversation that has occurred in the last two months. I will first present the content under dispute, then summarize the most up-to-date arguments for its inclusion, and, finally, provide my own response.

Part 1: The content. The dispute in question is whether Russian phonotactics allows for the pronunciation of clusters with more than four consonants in the syllable onset. Since late April, the article has claimed that it does, though with various changes in wording. Its current form in the article is:

Thus, prepositions (especially the three that consist of just a single consonant: к, с, and в) contribute to phonological words with up to five consonant clusters in the syllable onset. Examples are к взгляду [gvzglʲadu] 'to [the] gaze', к встрече, 'to/for [a, the] meeting', as in 'ready for a meeting'.

Part 2: Arguments for. The quotations below, which are more illustrative than exhaustive, are from Dale Chock, who originally included the claim under dispute and is its primary proponent in this talk page. Since these arguments are located in this talk page, I have not provided links to them. My focus is on just the arguments for the claim in question; other methods of rhetorical persuasion, such as appeals to authority or ad hominem attacks, will not be addressed.

• Point 1: Accuracy in orthographic representations
  • "We do not need to prove that a particular Russian spelling is unrealistic...What we would need to prove instead is that a Russian word is NOT pronounced as spelled. Where Russian is not pronounced as spelled, THEN it is appropriate to inform the reader."

Russian has a very transparent orthography. While there is a morphemic basis to Russian spelling, it more-or-less offers a fairly accurate correspondence to pronunciation. Thus, in relation to consonant clusters, the argument goes that consonant clusters are assumed pronounced as written until shown otherwise.

• Point 2: Exceptions to accurate representations are noted in dictionaries/grammars
  • " Any spelling not mentioned by the grammarians of the Russian language, not subjected to "buts", is fit to go into this article"

Cubberley (2002), cited in the article, puts forth a list of "older simplifications which occurred as the language shifted from open- to closed-syllable structure" (p. 82). In addition, an anonymous editor has access to two Russian-language sources (what look like a linguistic grammar and an article) that lay out well-known exceptions to accuracy in orthographic representations. Whether or not these sources intend these listed exceptions to be exhaustive, the burden falls on the editor seeking to show further exceptions.

• Point 3: Affixation and phonological words
  • "There are LOTS of quadruple consonant clusters in Russian due to affixation or to word compounding"

Certain affixes in Russian may add to an already-existing consonant cluster. This is also true of prepositions that have no inherent vowel. This means that a word's dictionary citation form with a three- or four-consonant onset may be further clustered with a preposition or prefix attached to it.

• Point 4: Orthographic representation of epenthesis
  • "in elementary Russian, one learns that the pronunciation of the words 'k', 's', and 'v' has to be expanded to ko, so, vo before some words, as in ko mnʲe."

This is an extension of the transparency of Russian orthography. As Cubberley (2002) indicates, there are a number of general situations where difficult clusters are broken up with epenthetic vowels. These epenthetic vowels are indicated orthographically. A rudimentary example is the three prepositions that consist of a single word unless they precede an already difficult consonant cluster, in which case an /o/ is epenthesized.

Part 3: Ƶ§œš¹'s responses and rebuttals. The justifications for my position, expanded on below, boil down to this: Russian has well-known patterns of mismatches between orthography and pronunciation, often due to consonant cluster reduction. This, in combination with explicit claims in scholarship of a four-consonant maximum in the syllable onset, prompts me to believe that four consonants are the maximum in the syllable onset, with potentially larger clusters being reduced through deletion and epenthesis (processes that also occur with smaller clusters). I believe it is original research to assume that these claims of a four-consonant maximum are limited to lexical (rather than phonological) words, and I don't believe that the orthographically represented process of epenthesizing ‹о› with prefixes and prepositions can account for Russian speakers' general strategies in dealing with complex onsets.

Points 1 and 2: Inaccuracies in orthographic representations. I do not dispute that Russian has a transparent orthography (Point 1). I also do not dispute the general position of Dale's that the burden is on editors wishing to argue that a given orthographic representation is inaccurate in Russian (point 2). While I have made efforts to fulfill this burden, it seems that it has not yet been convincing. As such, I have taken the effort to search resources available to me to further back up my case that the claim in question (that Russian allows more than four consonants in the syllable onset) requires attribution. Here are my justifications:

• Patterns of mismatch between orthography and pronunciation.

As presented in the article, there are certain patterns where consonant clusters are simplified from their written form. Importantly, the patterns that Cubberley (2002) lists for "word-specific clusters" are not exhaustive (it is unclear whether he meant them to be), as an anonymous user has contributed two more examples of such patterns. Furthermore, Halle (1959) lists an example of deletions in his "P" (phonological) rules that closely parallels these "historical" rules. This rule, which says (p. 69) that dental stops are dropped in the position between a dental continuant and |*n| (e.g. |ˈle*stʲnij| = [ˈlʲɛsnɨj] 'flattering'), suggests that the more complex (that is, pre-deletion) forms are present in speakers' underlying mental grammars and deleted in the process of production, rather than being "historical." More importantly, though, these show that Russian spelling is not always accurate.

• More general claim of deletions

Cubberley (2002) states that "Clusters of three or more consonants are frequently simplified in pronunciation by deletion of one of them" (p. 80). He gives an example of a general pattern of deletion with geminate consonants that are simplified in clusters and then moves on to a section on the historical "word-specific clusters" that I allude to above. This is the totality of his coverage of deletion and I suspect that he did not mean to be exhaustive in his coverage of such deletions. Cubberley does not explicitly state that four consonants are the maximum for onset clusters.

• In explicit generalizations about Russian, I have never seen anything beyond claims of four consonants in the syllable onset.
  • This presentation slideshow (based on Grigorenko 2006, " If John were Ivan, would he fail in reading") says:"frequent multiple consonant clusters and syllables as complex as CCCCVC"
  • Ostapenko (2005) [cited in article]: "The possible onset in Russian can be even more complex, as it tolerates up to four consonants at the beginning of the syllable.” (I expand on this in my next point below)
  • Proctor (2009) chapter 6: "Russian allows longer clusters than most languages – up to four consonants in both onsets... and codas" (p. 126) (also, a table in chapter 1 describes a list of four-consonant onsets as "maximal onset clusters in Russian” (p. 2).
  • Russian for Dummies: "Combinations of two, three, and even four consonants are quite common."
• In less explicit generalizations, four consonants seem to normally be the maximum indicated for onsets
  • Trapman (2007) divides up Russian onset clusters by section and stops at 4 consonant sequences (p. 29). (Incidentally, Trapman stops with 3 consonants in the section on coda clusters. What a bag of worms!)
  • Chew (2010): Discussion of complex onsets and codas (beginning on p. 76); according to my limited Google Books preview (I can't see all of pages 83-99), Chew ends coverage of onsets with four consonants, saying "Finally, we need to consider four-consonant onsets..." (p. 86). There doesn't seem to be any mention of five- or six-consonant clusters.

The lone exception I have found, if I can call it that, is Kochetov (1999), who says, in passing, "The patterns attested in three- (46), four-, and five-consonant clusters are governed by the same principle and the presence of palatalized consonants in them is even more restricted" (p. 201)

As can be seen, there is (IMHO) sufficient justification to cast doubt on the claim of more than four consonants in the syllable onset in Russian. What I have found could very well be misrepresentative or even flat-out wrong, but sourcing should be used to indicate this.

Point 3: Affixation and phonological words. To put it bluntly, Dale's edits show a reliance on source synthesis to back up the claim that Russian allows more than four consonants in the syllable onset, a claim that none of the sources cited backs up. WP:SYNTH states:

Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources.

Here is how the claims present in the article are an OR synthesis of the sources presented:

• Subclaim A: Russian has fewer phonotactic restrictions on consonants (Davidson & Roon 2008) [verified]
• Subclaim B1: Prepositions in Russian act like clitics (Rubach 2000) [verified]
• Sublcaim B2: Prepositions combine with a following word into a phonological word (Halle 1959; Bickel & Nichols 2007) [verified]
• Conclusion C: Phonological words with prepositions can have syllable onsets with five consonants. [not present in sources used for A or B)

This shows that, despite the sourcing present, one can't extrapolate the claim in question from the sources given.

In addition, Dale has rephrased the wording of a claim using a source (Ostapenko 2005) that contradicts his claim and cited it to back up claims it does not make. Again, the source in question states: "The possible onset in Russian can be even more complex, as it tolerates up to four consonants at the beginning of the syllable.”

While this statement was used in this article to back up a claim about a four-consonant maximum in the syllable onset, Dale has reworded it to: "Some maintain that there is in fact a systematic four-consonant limitation in the syllable onset of lexical words." This adds extra claims that are not backed up in Ostapenko. Here is the breakdown:

• Statement about claims in scholarship regarding four-consonant limitation [not present]
• Four-consonant limitation in onset [verified]
• Parsing of lexical words and phonological words [not present]

The first bullet point is something that I don't think Dale intended. It seems that he meant to hedge usage of Ostapenko's strong claim about onset limits with weasel wording designed to cast doubt into how representative this view is. Altering the attribution to explicitly state that Ostapenko is meant to be an example of this first bullet point would still not fix this problem; as I have shown above, her view is much more representative than "some maintain" would imply. It would also be original research, as an article's use as an example of meta-claims would be insufficient verification of such meta-claims.

The third bullet point involves Dale assuming in his reading of Ostapenko the very thing he wishes to prove (that there is a difference between onset limits of lexical words and those of phonological words). This false attribution might be more understandable had Ostapenko's examples been composed solely of lexical words. But she used no such lexical examples to reinforce this claim. Even if she had, Dale's wording still introduces novel information that she does not claim and that non-experts—even native speakers of Russian—would not see as obvious.

Point 4: Orthographic representation of epenthesis. Rubach (2000) says (p. 53) that the epenthesized vowel of single-consonant prepositions and prefixes occur when the following onset is a consonant cluster beginning with the same consonant as the preposition (barring voicing distinctions). This backs up Cubberley's (2002) more general statement about geminates in consonant clusters. Importantly, Cubberley (p. 83) states that there are two "lexically specific clusters" that this epenthesis is extended to: мн- ('me') and вс- ('all'). I believe Dale pointed out this process of vowel epenthesis to show that Russian has a method (indicated in the orthography) of dealing with difficult or awkward consonant clusters. However, the environment where these prepositions and prefixes occur with an epenthetic vowel is a very specific one, meant primarily to deal with geminate consonants in clusters and not as a general method of dealing with otherwise difficult consonant clusters.

Like I have already said, it's possible that the sources I have access to provide a skewed presentation of Russian phonotactics, but I have shown that there is reason to doubt the claim of more than four consonants in the syllable onset. This is why I have marked the claim in the article. Editors are welcome to contribute to the discussion, though I ask that you please keep them in the Discussion subsection immediately below. Thank you — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:35, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

• Without even reading Part 3 (TLDR), the way forward seems obvious to me: WP:OR requires that we supply a source for reasonably contested claims. If Dale Chock wants to claim that Russian allows C⁵ clusters, then he is required to reference that claim with a RS that states that Russian allows C⁵ clusters. If he knows it's true because he's a native speaker, strict adherence to the rules would still require an independent source; if he's inferring it from grammars or dictionaries, then that would be an obvious case of OR violation. Such a claim may be deleted at any time as unsourced/OR. Certainly repeated deletion of {{cn}} tags would be reason for a block. — kwami (talk) 21:10, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

• I comment without specific knowledge of Russian or the literature on Russian phonology. But if (as appears to be the case from Ƶ§œš¹'s presentation above) grammars state that up to four consonants is the rule, that should be reflected here. If any sources suggest that five-consonant-clusters exist, those sources should also be cited, being careful not to give them undue weight relative to the total literature. If most of the existing literature is wrong, that's unfortunate for linguistics, philology, and Russian language studies as fields, but not really something to be remedied by Wikipedia. (Compare Timothy Messer-Kruse#Wikipedia Controversy.) Cnilep (talk) 08:09, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

• I cannot devote adequate attention to this discussion this week. A few points raised in this section seem urgent. There is this obsequious opinion that "Russian spelling is very transparent". That this silly belief could be adopted by someone who has spent the last five years shaping this article into a tedious pronunciation manual of standard Russian just reinforces some of my previous assessments. For now, mainly I need to dissociate myself from this opinion. Changing subject, the citation in connection with this thread of a master's thesis which is devoted to comparing second language acquisition across three European languages is absurdly bad judgement. What's really bad about this is she just looked up and cited -- who? Two of the sources you quote ALONGSIDE her! Obviously you think quantity equals quality. Why you would imagine, already having Chew and Cubberley and some others here (along with Halle, etc. in the article generally), that you would have to pile on with citing some student who's only doing what you do . . . .

• Turning to Kwamikagami. I can only hope that if things come to my being blocked, it will be implemented by an administrator who hasn't spectacularly indulged in bias in this dispute. Oh, I don't want any biased administrator to involve themselves, but especially not a spectacularly biased one -- that's you; I'm not going to link to the outbursts for now, does anybody miss that? And let's discuss the idea of your weighing in on appropriate citation of sources. Although I have seen you coach and cajole others (Aesos himself somewhere, I didn't make note of which article) about giving sources, I have hardly ever seen you give a source or even make a content edit. That's an understatement. I remember sometime last year, you seemed in a hurry to delete an insertion about Turkish having some particular allophone. You and the inserter couldn't find any source, but who but me myself should have happened along. In 15 minutes of Web searching I served up to Kwamikagami a book at Google Books. The discussion is probably in his user talk page archives, but perhaps in the Turkish language talk page. Dale Chock (talk) 08:47, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

So you don't think Russian spelling is transparent now? Or have I misinterpreted your comments? You know what transparent means in regards to writing systems, right?

As far as the quantity-quality distinction, it doesn't really hold up when there aren't any contradictory sources. But maybe you can show otherwise. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 12:57, 15 May 2012 (UTC)