Table of Contents
                   Acknowledgements                                                                     2
                   Abbreviations                                                                        3
                   0.1  Location and number of speakers                                                 4
                   0.2  Brief overview of the Russian literary language                                 4
                   0.3  Dialects                                                                        5
                   1.  Phonology                                                                        6
                   1.1  Orthography                                                                     6
                   1.2  Phonemic inventory                                                              8
                   1.3.  Vowels and Prosody                                                             9
                   1.4  Consonants                                                                     13
                   1.5  Morphophonemic alternations                                                    17
                   1.6  Pronunciations variants of CSR in Moscow and St. Petersburg                    20
                   1.7  Tongue twisters and diction                                                    21
                   2.  Morphology                                                                      22
                   2.1  Inflectional morphology                                                        22
                   2.2 Declension                                                                      24
                   2.3 Indeclinable Nouns                                                              29
                   2.4 Other declensional desinences: singular                                         30
                   2.5 Declensional desinences: plural                                                 31
                   2.6 Formation of the Genitive Plural                                                32
                   2.7 The semantics of the Russian case system                                        34
                   2.8  Adjectives                                                                     41
                   2.9  Pronouns                                                                       49
                   2.10 Numerals                                                                       56
                   2.11 Time expressions                                                               62
                   2.12 Nondeclinables:  Adverbs and prepositions                                      64
                   2.13  Derivational Morphology                                                       67
                   2.14 Verbs                                                                          82
                   3.  Syntax                                                                         123
                   3.1 Syntax and syntactic categories                                                123
                   3.2 Conditionals/Hypotheticals                                                     123
                   3.3 Grammatical particles                                                          124
                   3.4 Verbal government                                                              125
                   3.5 Impersonal constructions                                                       125
                   3.6 Proverbs and collocations                                                      127
                   3.7 Use of profanity in CSR                                                        127
                   Bibliography                                                                       129
                                                                                                        1
        Acknowledgements
        This project would not have been possible without the reviews and criticisms of several
        respected colleagues, including Ron Feldstein, Elena  Maksimova  and Irina Guliakova.
        My special thanks to Troy Williams for his assistance in editing, glossing and preparing a
        camera-ready manuscript.
                                           2
                    Abbreviations
                    A              accusative
                    adj            adjective
                    adv            adverb
                    anim           animate
                    arc            archaic
                    C              consonant
                    CSR            Contemporary Standard Russian
                    CSCR           Contemporary Standard Colloquial Russian
                    D              dative
                    f, fem         feminine
                    G              genitive
                    I instrumental
                    inan           inanimate
                    L              locative
                    m, masc        masculine
                    N              nominative
                    n, neut        neuter
                    pl             plural
                    sg             singular
                    V              vowel
                    n/s            non-syllabic
                    PPP            past passive participle
                    Ø              zero desinence
                    / /phonemic transcription
                    [ ]            phonetic transcription
                    { }            morphophonemic and morphological transcription
                    ' '            English glosses
                                                                                                                3
        0.  Socio- and geolinguistic situation
        0.1  Location and number of speakers
        Russian is the official language of the Russian Federation and was the primary official
        language of the Soviet Union (cf. Maps 1 and 2).  Since the breakup of the USSR, Russian
        continues to be one of the official languages of Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, and may be used
        for official  purposes in Kazakhstan  and Ukraine.  Recently  ranked as the 4th most
        influential language in the world (Weber 1999: 22), Russian is the first or second language
        of over 455 million speakers (Crystal 1997: 449).
         
        0.2  Brief overview of the Russian literary language
        Russian, belonging to the Indo-European language family, is one of three contemporary
        East Slavic languages, the other two being  Ukrainian and Belorussian.   Old Church
        Slavonic, a South Slavic language, played a significant role in the development of the
        Russian language throughout its history with two periods of intensification, one during
        the 11th-13th centuries and  another  during  the  Second  South  Slavic  influence (also
        referred to as “Re-Bulgarization”) in the 14th century.  One may characterize the
        coexistence of Old Church Slavonic and the East Slavic vernacular as diglossic.    This
        period of diglossia lasted well into the 18th century.  
        Isačenko suggests that the name “Russian” be used for the written language only after the
        Tartar invasion and the destruction of Kiev (1980: 124).  [Prior to this period, he suggests
        the term “East Slavic recension of Church Slavonic.”]  Isačenko argues convincingly that
        one may begin to speak of a Russian literary language (which will later give rise to CSR)
        during a period from 1760-1825, dates that  generally correspond with Karamzin’s life
        [1766-1825] (1980: 132-139).  
        Mixail  Vasiljevič  Lomonosov, Nikolaj Mixailovič  Karamzin and Aleksandr Sergeevič
        Puškin were critical contributors to the development of what can be referred to as the
        modern Russian  literary  language.  While the contributions of all 3 were  significant,
        Karamzin was perhaps the most influential.  However, it has often  been  the  case in
        Russian and Soviet scholarship that Puškin has been given most of the credit for the
        creation of a literary language and style (Vinogradov 1990: 6-7).    
        Lotman and Uspenskij  (1975: 196-7, 246) demonstrate the importance of French
        influence as a model of constructing a literary language in Russia and argue that it was, in
        fact, the “Russian language” of the aristocracy that made  the greatest impact on the
        Russian literary language.  German also plays an important  role in the formation of
        scientific terminology and lexicon during the 18th and  19th  centuries (Isačenko 1980:
        135).
        Over the past 200 years, the Russian literary language  (henceforth  Contemporary
        Standard Russian - CSR) has remained generally stable, but certainly reflects a number of
        phonological, morphological and lexical changes.    The most significant of these changes is
        found in the lexicon, where not only declensional and agreement gender have been (or are
        being) renegotiated (cf. lebed’ (f > m); kofe (m > n)), but the overall number of lexical
                                           4