Russian grammar

Russian grammar encompasses:
* a highly synthetic morphology
* a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements:
** a Church Slavonic inheritance;
** a Western European style;
** a polished vernacular foundation.

The Russian language has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflexional structure, although considerable levelling has taken place.

The spoken language has been influenced by the literary, but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language.

NOTE: In the discussion below, various terms are used in the meaning they have in the standard Russian discussions of historical grammar. In particular, aorist, imperfect, etc. are considered verbal tenses rather than aspects, because ancient examples of them are attested for both perfective and imperfective verbs.

Nouns

Nominal declension is subject to six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, prepositional, and instrumental), in two numbers (singular and plural), and obeying absolutely grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter). Up to ten additional cases are identified in linguistics textbooks, [ru icon Zaliznyak A. A. "Русское именное словоизменение." Moscow.: Science, 1967] [ru icon Uspenskij V. A. "К определению падежа по А. Н .Колмогорову // Бюллетень объединения по проблемам машинного перевода." Issue. 5. Moscow., 1957 [http://www.kolmogorov.pms.ru/uspensky-k_opredeleniyu_padezha_po_kolmogorovu.html online copy] ] [ru icon Klobukov E. V. "Семантика падежных форм в современном русском литературном языке. (Введение в методику позиционного анализа)" Moscow: Moscow State University Press, 1986.] although all of them are either incomplete (do not apply to all nouns) or degenerate (appear identical to one of the six simple cases). The most well-recognized additional cases are locative (в лесу, в крови, в слезах), partitive (сапог, чулок, вольт), and several forms of vocative (господи, деда, батянь). The adjectives, pronouns, and the first two cardinal numbers further vary by gender. Old Russian also had a third number, the dual, but except for its use in the nominative and accusative cases with the numbers two, three and four, eg. (два стула IPA| [dvɐ ˈstulə] , "two chairs", recategorized today as a genitive singular), it has been lost.

There are no definite or indefinite articles in the Russian language. The sense of a noun is determined from the context in which it appears. That said, there are some means of expressing whether a noun is definite or indefinite. They are:
# The use of a direct object in the genitive instead of the accusative in negation signifies that the noun is indefinite, compare: "Я не вижу книги" ("I don't see a book" or "I don't see any book") and "Я не вижу книгу" ("I don't see the book").
# The use of the numeral one sometimes signifies that the noun is indefinite, e.g.: "Почему ты так долго?" - "Да так, встретил одного друга, пришлось поговорить" ("Why did it take you so long?" - "You see, I met a friend and had to talk").
# Word order may also be used for this purpose, compare "В комнату вбежал мальчик" ("A boy rushed into the room") and "Мальчик вбежал в комнату" ("The boy rushed into the room").
# The use of plural form instead of singular may signify that the noun is indefinite: "Вы купите это в магазинах." - "Вы купите это в магазине." ("You can buy this in a shop." lit. "...in shops" - "You can buy this in the shop.")

The category of animacy is relevant in Russian nominal and adjectival declension. Specifically, the accusative form in many paradigms has two possible forms depending on the animacy of the referent. For animate referents (people and animals), the accusative form is identical to the genitive form. For inanimate referents, the accusative form is identical to the nominative form. This principle is relevant for masculine singular nouns of the first declension (see below) and adjectives, and for all plural paradigms (with no gender distinction). In the tables below, this behavior is indicated by the abbreviation "N or G" in the row corresponding to the accusative case.

In Russian there are three declension types, named simply first, second, and third declensions. The first declension (the second in Russian school grammars) is used for masculine and most neuter nouns. The second declension (the first in school grammars) is used for most feminine nouns. The third declension is used for feminine nouns ending in ь and for neuter nouns ending in мя.

First declension - masculine nouns

Nouns ending in a consonant are marked in the following table with - (thus no ending).

#After a sibilant or a velar (г, к, or х) consonant, и is written.
#After a sibilant, о is written when stressed; е when unstressed.
#After a soft consonant, ё is written when stressed; е when unstressed.

Third declension

* Russian is subject to T-V distinction. The respectful form of the singular "you" is the same as the plural form, but beginning with a capital letter: "Вы", "Вас", "Вам" etc. Compare the distinction between "du", "sie" and "Sie" in German.
* When a preposition is used directly before a 3rd-person pronoun, н- is prefixed: у него, с неё, etc. Because the prepositional case always occurs after a preposition, the third person prepositional always starts with an н-.

Demonstrative pronouns

этот "this" and тот "that"

* The third person possessive pronouns его (masc./neut. sing.), её (fem. sing.) and их (plural) are invariant genitive forms.

Interrogative pronouns

кто "who" and что "what"

Present-future tense

There are two forms used to conjugate the present tense of imperfective verbs and the future tense of perfective verbs.

The first conjugation (I) is used in verb stems ending in a consonant, -у, or -о, or in -а when not preceded by a sibilant:

* -у/-ю, -ешь, -ет, -ем, -ете, -ут/-ют
** -у/-ут is used after a hard consonant, a vowel or ш, щ or ч; otherwise -ю/-ют is used.
** A mutating ultimate consonant may cause ending change.
** е becomes ё when stressed.

The second conjugation (II) is used in verb stems ending in -и or -е, or in -а when preceded by a sibilant:

* -у/-ю, -ишь, -ит, -им, -ите, -ат/ят
** -у/-ат is used after a hard consonant, a vowel or ш, щ or ч; otherwise -ю/-ят is used.
** Similar to the conjugation I, a mutating ultimate consonant may change an ending.
"Example:" попро-сить — попро-шу, попро-сят IPA| [pəprɐˈsʲitʲ, pəprɐˈʂu, pɐˈprosʲɪt] (to have solicited — [I, they] will have solicited).

Past tense

The Russian past tense is gender specific: –л for masculine singular subjects, –ла for feminine singular subjects, –ло for neuter singular subjects, and –ли for plural subjects. This gender specificity applies to all persons; thus, to say "I slept", a male speaker would say я спал, while a female speaker would say я спала.

Examples

First conjugation

вернуть — to return [something] (stem: верн–)

Irregular verbs

The following verbs have a stem change. The stem part of the verb is in the parentheses. The endings are regular.

брать (бер–) — to take

: беру, берёшь, берёт, берём ,берёте, берут

вести (вед–) — to lead

: веду, ведёшь, ведёт, ведём, ведёте, ведут

жить (жив–) — to live

: живу, живёшь, живёт, живём, живёте, живут

звать (зов–) — to call

: зову, зовёшь, зовёт, зовём, зовёте, зовут

давать (да–) — to give

: даю, даёшь, даёт, даём, даёте, дают

идти (ид–) — to go

: иду, идёшь, идёт, идём, идёте, идут

писать (пиш-) — to write (notice the с becomes a ш)

: пишу, пишешь, пишет, пишем, пишете, пишут

The following verbs endings do not conform to the first or second conjugations.

дать — to give

: дам, дашь, даст, дадим, дадите, дадут

есть — to eat

: ем, ешь, ест, едим, едите, едят

The following verbs are irregular in the first person.Notice the д becomes ж in the first person. This is a common irregularity on stems ending with д.

ходить (ход–) — to walk

: хожу, ходишь, ходит, ходим, ходите, ходят

ездить (езд–) — to travel

: езжу, ездишь, ездит, ездим, ездите, ездят

видеть (вид–) — to see

: вижу, видишь, видит, видим, видите, видят

Word formation

Russian has on hand a set of prefixes, prepositional and adverbial in nature, as well as diminutive, augmentative, and frequentative suffixes and infixes. All of these can be stacked one upon the other, to produce multiple derivatives of a given word. Participles and other inflexional forms may also have a special connotation. For example:

Some linguists have suggested that Russian agglutination stems from Church Slavonic. In the twentieth century, "abbreviated" components appeared in the compound:

Absolute construction

Despite the inflexional nature of Russian, there is no equivalent in the modern language to the English nominative absolute or the Latin ablative absolute construction. The old language had an absolute construction, with the noun put into the dative. Like so many other archaisms, it is retained in Church Slavonic. Among the last known examples in literary Russian occurs in Radishchev's "Journey from Petersburg to Moscow" ("Путешествие из Петербурга в Москву" IPA| [putʲɪˈʂɛstvʲɪjɪ ɪs pʲɪtʲɪrˈburgə v mɐˈskvu] ), 1790:
* Едущу мне из Едрова, Анюта из мысли моей не выходила. IPA| [ˈjeduɕːu mnʲe ɪzʲ jɪˈdrovə, ɐˈnʲutə ɪz ˈmɨsʲlʲɪ mɐˈjej nʲɪ vɨxɐˈdʲilə] "As I was leaving Yedrovo village, I could not stop thinking about Aniuta."

References

ee also

* List of Russian language topics
*Reduplication in Russian language

External links

* [http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/ Interactive On-line Reference Grammar of Russian]
* [http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Russian Wikibooks Russian]
* [http://gramota.ru Gramota.ru - dictionaries]
* [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Russian_language Wiktionary has word entries in Cyrillic with meanings and grammatical analysis in English]
* [http://ru.wiktionary.org Russian Wiktionary gives word meanings and grammatical analysis in Russian]
* [http://www.practicerussian.com/Grammar/Grammar.aspx Russian grammar overview with practice tests]
* [http://www.russianresources.info/links.aspx/grammar Over 400 links to Russian Grammar articles around the Net]