Introduction to Russian phonology and word structure Ch 7: Sound and spelling problems

Q&A 1. Do the unpaired consonants behave differently from the hard and soft paired consonants?

Q&A 1. Do the unpaired consonants behave differently from the hard and soft paired consonants? NO! They behave just like all other consonants – their hardness/softness affects the pronunciation of contiguous vowels in exactly the same way. Spelling has nothing to do with phonetics (it is an artifact of history) One caveat (2): if <e> appears unstressed after an unpaired hard consonant, it will reduce to [], as in ежегодно, шевелить

NOTE For a good statement of spelling rules in Russian, see the Appendix to the Case Book for Russian (however, there are some very minor points that may apply to items other than nouns and adjectives).

Q&A 3. What grammatical information can <ь> provide?

Q&A 3. What grammatical information can <ь> provide? Feminine noun (N/Asg) 2sg non-past verb Infinitive verb None (in the case of some adverbs)

Q&A 4. What could we say about Russian dialects that always pronounce [j] before и?

Q&A 4. What could we say about Russian dialects that always pronounce [j] before и? They have created some consistency, such that all the vowels that occur after a soft consonant are preceded by [j] in initial position

5. Transcription Let’s do this on the board!