Prepared by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt+russ0010@pitt.edu)
Last modified: 2007-11-11
Location: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~russ0010/2081/single.html
Main course web site:
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~russ0010/2081/
0. Why bother?
1. Introduction
2. Roots, suffixes, stems, and grammatical endings
2.1. The parts of a word
2.2. All about roots
2.3. All about suffixes
2.4. All about grammatical endings
2.4.1. Present tense grammatical endings
2.4.2. Truncation and mutation
2.4.3. Past tense grammatical endings
2.4.4. The infinitive
3. All about stress
3.1. General stress guidelines
3.2. Present tense stress
3.3. Past tense stress
In most language courses, students learn verbs by learning infinitives and conjugation patterns (that is, sets of endings). The problem with this approach in Russian is that the infinitive doesn't tell you anything useful about the conjugation pattern. For example, the infinitives чита́ть and писа́ть seems to end similarly, but they are conjugated very differently: я́ чита́ю but я́ пишу́ (and where did that ш come from anyway!?). Similarly, the infinitives говори́ть and жи́ть seem to end similarly, but they are also conjugated very differently: я́ говорю́ but я́ живу́ (and where did that в come from anyway!?).
Because you cannot predict the forms of a verb from the infinitive, merely memorizing the infinitive isn’t enough. Your textbook instructs you to memorize several forms of each verb, and you can do that, but with six present-tense forms plus four past-tense forms plus one infinitive, that means learning eleven forms (so far) for every verb (or seventy-seven forms for the seven verbs in this unit).
Fortunately, there is an alternative: you can learn a single stem from which all present-tense, past-tense, and infinitival forms of a verb can be derived by following a set of rules. The cost of this approach is that 1) the stem is abstract (it isn’t a real Russian word that people use in speech; it’s an abstraction that is useful only because you can use it to derive real word forms) and 2) you need to learn the rules, which are somewhat complex. Since you plan on learning hundreds (or even thousands) of Russian verbs in your life, learning a set of complex rules once will ultimately mean less work than memorizing several forms for each verb that you learn. On the other hand, if you are more comfortable memorizing actual word forms than working with abstract stems and a system of rules, it’s perfectly okay to learn verbs as your textbook suggests. As with all grammatical topics in this course, the only way we’ll test your knowledge of verbs is to ask you to produce the forms. How you get there (whether through memorization or through the application of rules) is up to you.
As with nouns and adjectives, you can think of verb forms as made up of stems and grammatical endings. In the case of nouns and adjectives, stems always end in a consonant (hard or soft). Additionally, the stem is the stable part of the word, which is always present in its entirety (except for mobile vowels) when you change grammatical endings.
In the case of verbs, stems may end in either consonants or vowels and the last part of the stem (the last letter or the last few letters) may be lost or modified when you add certain grammatical endings. Those losses and modifications are governed by extremely regular rules, as result of which there are only about dozen truly irregular verbs in the entire language. (Aren’t you glad you aren’t studying French?)
The following description of the single-stem verb system is slightly simplified (which is why we label it “Version 1”), but it provides all the information you need to deal with the seven verbs you learn in Unit 3, which are:
| Infinitive | Stem | Suffix type |
|---|---|---|
| зна́ть | zn-áj+ | aj |
| изуча́ть | izuč-áj+ | aj |
| понима́ть | pon'im-áj+ | aj |
| чита́ть | čit-áj+ | aj |
| жить | živ+ | non-suffixed |
| писа́ть | p'is-a+ | a |
| говори́ть | govor'-í+ | i |
We’ll provide a more complete explanation later in the course, when you know more verbs.
A verb form (e.g., чита́ю) consists of a stem plus a grammatical ending. The stem, in turn, consists of a root plus an optional suffix.
Note that roots, suffixes, stems, and grammatical endings are not Russian words. They are parts of Russian words, and you need to combine them to form a real word.
As with nouns and adjectives, think of stems and grammatical endings in terms of sounds, rather than letters. To create a verb form, combine the sounds of a stem and the sounds of a grammatical ending. For example, to say ‘I read’ (present tense), combine the stem /čit-áj+/ with the grammatical ending /u/. Because Russian spells the sound /j/ between two vowels by using a soft vowel letter, the resulting word is spelled чита́ю (five letters but six sounds: /čitáju/).
As noted above, the root always ends in a consonant and represents the lexical part of the verb. That is, it distinguishes ‘read’ from ‘understand’ from ‘study,’ etc. It may be followed by an optional suffix.
Some stems consist of a bare root; these are called non-suffixed (the only example you have so far is /živ+/). Other stems consist of a root plus a suffix, and the grammatical ending is added after the suffix. As noted above, there are only about a dozen suffixes in the Russian language. In the table above you have the suffixes /–aj+/, /–a+/, and /–i+/). You can always tell the conjugation type (–ёт or –ит) by the suffix. We’ll give you a complete chart later, but of the verb types you get in this unit, all verbs with the suffix /–i+/ are –ит conjugation and all verbs of all the other types (other suffixes and non-suffixed) are –ёт conjugation.
There are only two conjugations (sets of present-tense grammatical endings) in Russian, the –ёт conjugation and the –ит conjugation. Those grammatical endings are:
| Subject | Grammatical ending | Example |
|---|---|---|
| я | /–u/ | пишу́, живу́, чита́ю |
| ты | /–'oš/ | пи́шешь, живёшь, чита́ешь |
| он, она, оно | /–'ot/ | пи́шет, живёт, чита́ет |
| мы | /–'om/ | пи́шем, живём, чита́ем |
| вы | /–'ot'e/ | пи́шете, живёте, чита́ете |
| они | /–ut/ | пи́шут, живу́т, чита́ют |
As is always the case in Russian, unstressed ё loses its dots and is pronounced like е. Thus, you hear the dots in живёт because the grammatical ending is stressed, but not in пи́шет or чита́ет because stress falls on the stem. That is, –ёт and –ет are really the same grammatical ending, /–'ot/, subject to the general rule (which you need to know anyway) about unstressed ё losing its dots
Similarly, the presentation in your textbook might seem to suggest that there are two 1sg grammatical endings for –ёт-conjugation verbs: –у (живу́) and –ю (чита́ю). In fact, there is one grammatical ending, the sound /u/, and whether it is spelled у or ю depends on whether you need to spell a /j/ before it. For example, the five letters in чита́ю spell the six sounds /čitáju/, where the sounds /čitáj/ constitute the stem and the sound /u/ is the grammatical ending. The normal way to spell /j/ between vowel sounds is with a soft vowel letter, so Russian uses the letter ю here to spell the the sound /j/ followed by the sound /u/.
Note that when your textbook speaks about stems ending in vowels and stems ending in consonants, it’s talking about letters. What constitutes a stem is different depending on whether you view Russian conjugation from the perspective of letters, as your textbook does, or from the perspective of sounds, as described here.
| Subject | Grammatical ending | Example |
|---|---|---|
| я | /–'u/ | говорю́ |
| ты | /–'iš/ | говори́шь |
| он, она, оно | /–'it/ | говори́т |
| мы | /–'im/ | говори́м |
| вы | /–'it'e/ | говори́те |
| они | /–'at/ | говоря́т |
As noted above, of the stem types you know now, all verbs with the suffix /–i+/ are –ит conjugation and all verbs of all other types (suffixed and non-suffixed) are –ёт conjugation.
In the single-stem model of Russian verb conjugation, stems may end in consonants (e.g., /živ+/, /čit-áj+/) or vowels (e.g., /p'is-a+/, /govor'-i+/). When two like things come together at the boundary of stem and grammatical ending (that is, two consonants or two vowels), the first one is truncated. This can be called C+C truncation (for two consonants) and V+V truncation (for two vowels). Note that consonants and vowels come together all the time in Russian without truncation; the truncation rule applies only at the boundary of verb stem followed by grammatical ending. The plus sign in the preceding notations are intended to remind you that this rule applies only at this type of boundary.
Furthermore, when two vowels come together, not only is the first vowel truncated, but the consonant before that vowel undergoes mutation. This can be called V+V mutation. V+V mutation is predictable (that is, the rules about when it does or does not happen and what consonant changes into what other consonant are very regular), and we’ll give you a full chart of them later, but for now, the only examples you have are the consonant /s/ in /p'is-a+/, which mutates to /š/, and the consonant /r/ in /govor'-í+/, which does not undergo mutation. That is, when /s/ mutates, it always mutates to /š/, while /r/ never mutates. Because the mutations reflect natural phonetic processes, they usually have counterparts in English. For example, the alternation of /s/ and /š/ shows up in English pairs like permissive (/s/) but permission (/š/). These parallels with English may not be strong enough to let you predict the outcome of mutation, but they should help you remember it (for example, /s/ doesn't mutate to, say, /b/, because there would be nothing phonetically natural about that).
As an example of where truncation and mutation do and don’t occur, /čit-áj+u/ (C+V) yields чита́ю without truncation or mutation because the stem ends in a consonant and the grammatical ending begins in a vowel, and consonants and vowels are “unlike things” for the purpose of the truncation rule. But /p'is-a+u/ (V+V) yields пишу́ in two steps: first, the /a/ at the end of the stem is truncated because it occurs where two vowels meet at a stem/ending boundary (V+V truncation); second, the consonant /s/ mutates to /š/ (V+V mutation).
The past-tense grammatical endings for all Russian verbs that you know so far are:
| Subject | Grammatical ending | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine singular | /–l/ | я́, ты́, о́н чита́л, писа́л, жи́л, говори́л |
| Feminine singular | /–la/ | я́, ты́, о́на чита́ла, писа́ла, жила́, говори́ла |
| Neuter singular | /–lo/ | оно́ чита́ло, писа́ло, жи́ло, говори́ло |
| Plural (all genders) | /–l'i/ | мы́, вы́, они́ чита́ли, писа́ли, жи́ли, говори́ли |
Russian past-tense grammatical endings are easy because there is no distinction between the two conjugations in the past tense. Furthermore, there is no mutation because the grammatical endings all begin with a consonant, and mutation happens only when two vowels meet (V+V mutation). There is trunction before the past tense endings, which all begin in the sound /l/, when a stem ends in a consonant (C+C truncation), so that, for example, the msg past tense of /čit-áj+/ loses the /j/ (producing чита́л) because /čit-áj+l/ has two consonants meeting at a boundary, and truncation occurs whenever two like things (two consonants or two vowels) meet at such a boundary. Likewise /živ+l/ yields жи́л.
The grammatical ending for the infinitive for all verbs that you know so far is /–t'/. Because this grammatical ending begins in a consonant, it causes truncation in the same situations as the past tense (where the grammatical endings also begin in a consonant). Specifically, there is trunction when a stem ends in a consonant, so that, for example, the infinitive of /čit-áj+/ loses the /j/ (producing чита́ть) because /čit-áj+t'/ has two consonants meeting at a boundary, and truncation occurs whenever two like things (two consonants or two vowels) meet at such a boundary. Likewise /živ+t'/ yields жи́ть.
When you look at the shifting stress in, e.g., я́ пишу́ but ты́ пи́шешь and она́ жила́ but они́ жи́ли, it sometimes seems as if stress can pop up anywhere in a Russian word, and the presence of stress on the stem or ending in one form of a verb tells you nothing about where stress will fall in other forms of the same verb. In fact, happily, the situation is not chaotic at all, and Russian verbal stress is very constrained, as described below.
Stress is the present tense of Russian verbs (of both conjugations) is of one of three types: it may be fixed on the stem (e.g., чита́ю, чита́ешь, etc.), it may be fixed on the ending (e.g., живу́, живёшь, etc. or говорю́, говори́шь, etc.), or it may shift. If it shifts, there is only one possible pattern of shifting stress: stress is on the ending in the я́ form and on the stem in all other present-tense forms. Thus пишу́, пи́шешь, пи́шет, пи́шем, пи́шете, пи́шут. This is the only verb you know so far that has shifting stress in the present tense.
With a very small number of exceptions, only suffixed verbs may have shifting stress in the present tense and only non-suffixed verbs may have shifting stress in the past tense. This means that for almost all verbs in Russian (and all of the verbs we know so far), if there is shifting stress in the present tense, stress is fixed on the suffix in the past tense and infinitive (and, as we’ll see below, if there is shifting stress in the past tense, there is fixed stress in the present tense). For example, /p'is-a+/ has shifting stress in the persent tense (пишу́, пи́шешь, пи́шет, пи́шем, пи́шете, пи́шут), so it has stressed fixed on the suffix in the infinitive and past tense (писа́л, писа́ла, писа́ли, писа́ть).
In this course, if stress is marked when we give you a stem, that means the stress is fixed on that place (stem or ending) everywhere. If we omit stress, it means that it is mobile. Thus, we write /p'is-a+/ without a stress mark because this verb has shifting stress (and because it is a suffixed verb, the shifting stress has to be in the present tense), but we write /govor'-í+/ with a stress mark because the stress is fixed. Since mobile stress in the present tense implies fixed stress in the past and vice versa, and since you know where that fixed stress will fall, the absence of an accent mark should not prevent you from determining where the stress goes in all forms.
Stress in the past tense is either fixed or shifting. As is the case with the present tense, if it shifts, there is only one possible pattern of shifting stress: stress is on the ending in the feminine and on the stem everywhere else. The only verb you know so far with shifting stress in the past is жи́л, жила́, жи́ли. So far, you can assume that if a verb has shifting stress in the past tense, stress is fixed on the ending in the present (there are a few exceptions, but you won’t need to learn them for a while). Thus, when we give you the stem /živ+/ without marking stress, that notation tells you that 1) this verb has shifting stress (since stress isn’t marked); 2) stress shifts in the past tense but not the present (since this is a non-suffixed verb, if it has shifting stress, the stress can shift only in the past tense); and 3) stress is fixed on the endings in the present (since a verb that has a shifting stress in the past necessarily has fixed stress on the endings in the present).