Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

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Silk
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Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

Post by Silk »

Those of you who know Russian know that when a masculine adjective has stress on the final syllable, the usual masculine -ый ending becomes -ой. I've recently noticed that there are some pairs of adjectives that come from words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, and have different stress patterns. So far I've found two examples.

языковый (having to do with the tongue, from язык - tongue) vs - языковой (having to do with languages, from язык - language)
роковый (having to do with rock music, from рок - rock music) vs - роковой (fatal, from рок - fate)

So does anyone who knows Russian know more groupings like this? And is there a list somewhere that has such groupings of adjectives specifically?

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Mecislau
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Re: Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

Post by Mecislau »

Since I read lots of linguistics-related texts in Russian, one that I come across quite often is врéменный "temporary" versus временнóй "temporal, related to tense". It always stands out to me whenever I see an acute accent in Russian text, since it's so infrequent.

As for a list, there's none that I know of...

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Re: Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

Post by Silk »

I thought of searching for a list, but I would have no idea what to call it in linguistics (or Russian) terminology. Adjectival stress variations?
I suppose that if such a list truly does not exist, then one should be created, since I find this idea quite interesting.

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Niedokonany
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Re: Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

Post by Niedokonany »

бо́льший - большо́й (though these aren't derived from any Russian noun)
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Re: Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

Post by Silk »

Piotr wrote:бо́льший - большо́й (though these aren't derived from any Russian noun)
What is the exact difference between these two? I see forms of большой all the time, but I only see the other form in contexts like большая часть.

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Re: Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

Post by Niedokonany »

According to my dict. большо́й = big, large, great and бо́льший is a comparative form of большо́й or великий, i.e. larger, bigger, greater (and also in expressions like бо́льшей частью, по бо́льшей части "for the most part", самое бо́льшее "at most").
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Re: Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

Post by Mecislau »

Silk wrote:
Piotr wrote:бо́льший - большо́й (though these aren't derived from any Russian noun)
What is the exact difference between these two? I see forms of большой all the time, but I only see the other form in contexts like большая часть.
It's like in English:

большáя часть = "a large part"
бóльшая часть = "the greater part"

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Furi Tsunori
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Re: Stress and meaning in Russian adjectives - minimal pairs

Post by Furi Tsunori »

Малый (small) — малой (a kiddo, slang).

Yo Silk :)
よろしゅうおたのもうします~

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