Dictionary of Spoken Russian/Russian-English/Section 5

§5. INFLECTION

The parts of speech in Russian are much as in English: noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection.

Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs are inflected; that is, there are different forms for singular and plural, present and past, and the like. Words are cited in the dictionary in only one of their forms; the others are not given and it is presumed that the reader can recognize them. In order to enable the reader to do so, we here give an outline of Russian inflection.

Inflected forms consist usually of a stem with different endings; thus слива [sljiva] "plum," сливы [sljivi] "plums," show a stem [sljiv-] and endings [-a, -i]. We write the sign [j] at the beginning of an ending to indicate that before this ending a hard consonant is made soft if possible. Thus, with ending [-je]: стол [stol] "table," на столе [n' stalje] "on the table"; стул [stul] "chair," на стуле [na stulji] "on the chair," руль [rulj] "steering wheel," на руле [n' rulje] "on the steering wheel," нож [noš] "knife," на ноже [n' naze] "on the knife" (because [ž] has no corresponding soft consonant).

In ordinary inflected words the stress is in all forms on the same syllable of the stem or else in all forms on the ending: еду, едет, едем, едете, едут [yedu, yedj't, yedj'm, yedj'tji, yed't] "I am riding, he is riding, we, you, they are riding"; иду, идёт, идём, идёте, идут [idu, idjot, idjom, idjotji, idut] "I am going, he is going, we, you, they are going"; the stems here are [yed-] with stress on the stem, and [id-] with stress on the endings, and the endings are in both instances [-u, -jot, -jom, -jotji, -ut].

If the stress of a set of forms is on the endings, then in a form which has no ending the stress is on the last vowel of the stem: карандаш [k'randaš] "pencil," with no ending, belongs to the set карандаши [k'r'ndaši] "pencils," карандашей [k'r'ndašey] "of pencils," and so on. The last vowel may be an inserted vowel: отец [atjec] "father" belongs to the set отцы [atci] "fathers," отцов [atcof] "of fathers," and so on. Quite a few words, however, have shifting stress, now on one syllable, now on another: голове [g'lava] "head," but головы [gol'vi] "heads." All such cases are indicated in the dictionary.