Outline of Colloquial/Conversational Russian

James R. Holbrook

Description

Linguistic Overview of Colloquial/Conversational Russian
The primary purposes of this book are to highlight the importance of Colloquial Russian in the classroom and to identify the differences between standard textbook presentations and the actual conversational Russian of educated native speakers. This is the first book in English to present Colloquial Russian as a coherent linguistic system.
Chapters show linguistic evidence of its systemic patterns. Based primarily on tape-recorded examples by Soviet/Russian scholars from Moscow and Leningrad, the book presents an outline of the more salient linguistic features of colloquial phonetics, morphology, syntax, word order and vocabulary. The last chapter presents some recommendations on how various elements of colloquial Russian may be introduced into the classroom.

Sujets

• Foreign Language study
• Lettres et linguistique
• Linguistics
• Colloquialism
• Russian
• Language

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 16 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663249791
• Langue: English

Extrait

Other Books by James R. Holb rook
Potsdam Mission:
  Memoir of a U.S. Army Intelligence Officer in Communist
  East Germany
Moscow Memoir:
  An American Military Attaché in the USSR 1979-1981
Outline of Colloquial/Conversational Russian
 
Linguistic Overview of the System
 
 
 
James R. Holbrook
Author of two memoirs: Potsdam Mission and Moscow Memoir
 
 

 
 
Copyright © 2023 James R. Holbrook.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4980-7 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4979-1 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023900821
 
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 02/09/2023
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
CHAPTER 1: WHY DID SHE SAY THAT?
CHAPTER 2: DEFINITIONS AND SOURCES
Definitions
Sources
CHAPTER 3: BRIEF HISTORY OF THE USE AND STUDY OF COLLOQUIAL RUSSIAN
Use of Colloquial Russian
Early Scholarly Interest in Colloquial Russian
Modern Study of Colloquial Russian
CHAPTER 4: PHONETICS
Phonetic Notation
Deletion
Vowels
Consonants
Intervocalic Consonants
Consonant Cluster Simplification
Consonants and Vowels in Phrases.
Addition: Vowel Insertion Between Consonants
Phonetics of Introductory Words and Phrases
Intonation
Summary of Colloquial Phonetics
CHAPTER 5: MORPHOLOGY
Noun
Genitive Case Endings for Some Masculine Singular Nouns
Plural of Some Masculine Nouns in CR
Vocative Case
Verb
Adverb
Adjective
Word Formation
Condensed Words
Affixes
Suffixes
Diminutive
Augmentative
Perjorative
Other Suffixes
Prefixes
Summary of Colloquial Morphology
CHAPTER 6: SYNTAX
Constructions in which an Element is deleted
Deletion of Adjectives
Deletion of Subordinating Connectors
Deletion of Verb
Constructions in which an Element is added.
Reduplication
Nouns and Pronouns
Adjectives and Adverbs
Verbs
Prepositions
Noun and Pronoun in Same Clause
Constructions in which Substitution Occurs
Substitution of Nominative for KLJ Oblique Case
Nominative for Accusative
Nominative for Genitive
Nominative for Instrumental
Nominative for Prepositional
Nominative for Dative
Substitution of Pronoun for Noun
Use of Такой and Какой
Summary of Colloquial Syntax
CHAPTER 7: WORD ORDER
General
Reordering of Words from their KLJ Positions
Noun and Adjective
Adverb and Adjective
Adverb and Adverb.
Clauses
Multiple Reordering in Simple Utterances
Independent Clause Separated by Independent Clause
Independent Clause Separated by Dependent Clause
Dependent Clause Separated by Independent Clause
Interspersing of Two Clauses
Unusual Placement of Subordinating Connectors
Summary of Word Order
CHAPTER 8: VOCABULARY
General Characteristics of CR Vocabulary
Dictionaries
Word Frequency Lists
Introductory Words
Shared Words in CR and KLJ
Figurative Meanings of Select Words
Economy of Speech
Hyperbole
Comprehensive Defining Dictionary (Толковый Словарь…)
Particles
Nomination
Adjectives
Descriptive Phrases
Pronouns, Adverbial and Noun Phrases That Replace Nouns
Noun and Verb replaced by который (which/who/that)
Idioms, Sayings and Proverbs
Summary of Colloquial Vocabulary
CHAPTER 9: RECOMMENDATIONS
General
Phonetics
Morphology
Syntax and Word Order
Vocabulary
Appendix: Source Abbreviations
Endnotes
Source Bibliography
Acknowledgements
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Colloquial Russian is conversational Russian. It has its own system and norms. Educated Russians use CR in everyday speech. Additionally, CR is often found in literature and other print forms, as well as in radio and TV.
The primary purposes of this book are: (1) to highlight the importance of Colloquial Russian in the classroom and (2) to identify the differences between the standard language found in textbooks and the conversational Russian of educated native speakers.
Russian scholars call Standard Russian the Codified Literary Language ( кодифицированный литературный язык ), abbreviated in Russian as КЛЯ . Colloquial Russian is русская разговорная речь, abbreviated in Russian as РРР (or разговорный язык , abbreviated РЯ) . I use the abbreviations KLJ for codified and CR for colloquial Russian in this book.
When I first began to study CR in the early 1970s, I found that B. Unbegauen’s 1950 article “Colloquial and Literary Russian” did not, in fact, deal with the structure of modern colloquial speech. Instead, the article covered the history of the influence of Church Slavonic, French and spoken Russian on the development of literary Russian.
As far as I could determine, there were no English-language materials on CR available in the United States, not even in the Library of Congress. 1 I seized upon a footnote in a Russian article that revealed a book on CR had been published at Saratov University in the USSR. I then fired off five letters to Soviet organizations I thought might be able to help me acquire that book.
Finally, in 1974, I received the book— Русская разговорная речь (RRR-70)—published in only 2000 copies. 2 Additionally, the authors sent me E.A. Zemskaya’s 1973 Русская разговорная речь , referred to throughout this book as RRR-73. RRR-73 turned out to be the seminal volume in the study of CR. Almost all CR scholars cite this book in their work; Е.А. Zemskaya even cites it in her later work. The main value of RRR-73 and later treatments of CR in Russia is that almost all examples are based on live, recorded samples of modern CR authenticated by Russian scholars. I collected no samples outside the USSR/Russia.
I used those books as the basis for the treatment of CR in my doctoral dissertation at Georgetown University. What drew me to this subject was that during my teaching Russian at the West Point Military Academy, cadets would come to me expressing their lack of comprehension when reading Soviet literature even though they understood all the words. 3
After Georgetown, my Army duties, including a tour at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, prevented me from pursuing academic work on CR. Ironically, while serving in Moscow in the late 1970s and early 1980s, each time I visited the central, open-air swimming pool, I passed the Soviet Academy’s Institute of the Russian Language where Zemskaya was working inside. Due to my status as a member of the Embassy staff, I deemed it inappropriate to contact her or her colleagues at the Institute because it might cause them political difficulties.
A few years later, after retirement from the army and intelligence work, I did get to visit Zemskaya during another sojourn in Moscow (1994-96), when I headed a joint US-Russian translation project for chemical demilitarization.
Happily, the dearth of work on CR in the United States that I faced in the early 1970s has been somewhat ameliorated. There are now some research materials available. In particular, the collection Topics in Colloquial Russian (1990) , edited by Margaret Mills, contains valuable articles on the linguistics and classroom presentation of CR. She treated colloquial word order in her PhD dissertation at the University of Michigan in 1985. Word order was also the topic for Asya Pereltsvaig in Studia Linguistica , 2008.
An excellent newer addition to the study of CR is Mark T. Hooker’s Implied But Not Stated: Condensation in Colloquial Russian (2006). In 2014, the first of a possible five-volume dictionary of CR words was published in Moscow: L. P. Krysin’s Толковый словарь русской разговорной речи. In 2016, V.K. Kharchenko’s published a five-volume Антология русской разговорной речи. Those books and later articles in such publications as Русский язык за рубежом, Russian Language Journal, Русский язык в национальной школе and Slavic and East European Journal have made it possible for me to catch up on the work done on CR since my Georgetown days. Worldcat.com and scholar.google.com yielded several books and articles under the keyword “Colloquial Russian,” but most of them dealt with words and phrases called “colloquialisms.” Even in textbooks titled Colloquial Russian, the term “colloquialism” is widespread. Nowhere in English is there a treatment of CR as a system with its own norms.
As chaotic as CR might first appear, it has a system of its own—one whose structures can be identified and some of which can be applied to the teaching of Russian. Hopefully, a presentation of these systematic aspects of CR will facilitate overcoming the disadvantage students now face in most Russian language programs. This book is intended for teachers, textbook authors and program designers—although students, other scholars and practitioners of the Russian language may also find the information useful.
Thus, this is not an original linguistics book