Stress in Russian

[So Haleza Grise]

Yes, I know it's supposedly arbitrary. But there are people who say that English stress is rule-governed, and as a native speaker I do seem to have something of an idea of where a newly encountered word should be stressed. Does anyone have any interesting materials on how it works in Russian? (English materials, that is.)

[vec]

There are certain rules in English, but give you a real word like extant and even the dictionary isn't sure, or fake words like virulact, ictonce, benoormed, iline and you've got no clue how they'd be stressed. They all have two or three possibilities and none sounds exactly wrong. So the rules in English are pretty meager. I bet Russian has the exact same situation: there are some rules (guidlines, even better), but mostly, it's just completely arbitrary.

[Mecislau]

There are certain rules in English, but give you a real word like extant and even the dictionary isn't sure, or fake words like virulact, ictonce, benoormed, iline and you've got no clue how they'd be stressed. They all have two or three possibilities and none sounds exactly wrong. So the rules in English are pretty meager. I bet Russian has the exact same situation: there are some rules (guidlines, even better), but mostly, it's just completely arbitrary.

Actually, I disagree. Given words like "virulact", "ictonce", "benoormed", and "iline", there is in fact a very definite way I would stress them: /"vi.rə.lækt/ /"ɪk.tan(t)s/, /bɪ."nurmd/, /"aɪ.laɪn/; they don't feel as though they have "two or three possibilities". Ask me today and ask me again in five years, and I'm pretty sure I'd give you exactly the same answers, because that's just how they seem they should be pronounced. The only reason I'd pronounce any of them differently would be if someone corrects me; they would then essentially become "exceptions" to whatever this unknown-word-stress-assigning-rule is.

The fact that I don't hesitate in assigning stress to these words and am consistent about it (and I believe, at least, that others would probably come up with the same stress patterns I did) seems to suggest that there is some sort of rule governing stress assignment in unknown words.



As for the original question, sorry, I'm not aware of any resources.

[Aurora Rossa]

I am no expert on this subject, although I have heard that the Russian language is indeed quite stressful.

[Beli Orao]

Just listen to a lot of Russian and you'll begin to pick it up. It's somewhat counterproductive to learn stress any other way. Stress in Russian was particularly difficult for me to learn (and I still struggle with it) because it's very different from stress in Serbo-Croat. I still pronounce things like "она дала" as ['ɐna 'da:.la] from time to time.

[makvas]

Actually, I disagree. Given words like "virulact", "ictonce", "benoormed", and "iline", there is in fact a very definite way I would stress them: /"vi.rə.lækt/ /"ɪk.tan(t)s/, /bɪ."nurmd/, /"aɪ.laɪn/; they don't feel as though they have "two or three possibilities".

Actually I would stress two of them differently: /Ik"tAnts/ and /I"lain/. I agree on the other two though.

[Mecislau]

Actually, I disagree. Given words like "virulact", "ictonce", "benoormed", and "iline", there is in fact a very definite way I would stress them: /"vi.rə.lækt/ /"ɪk.tan(t)s/, /bɪ."nurmd/, /"aɪ.laɪn/; they don't feel as though they have "two or three possibilities".

Actually I would stress two of them differently: /Ik"tAnts/ and /I"lain/. I agree on the other two though.

In the latter case, however, I think that may be a consequence of how we each decided to pronounce the first vowel. You read it as /I/ and I read it as /aI/. I think this may be English spelling getting in the way. If you just gave me a phonemic representation /I.laIn/, I would pronounce it stressed on the second syllable; if you gave me /aI.laIn/, I would stress it on the first.

[makvas]

Actually, I disagree. Given words like "virulact", "ictonce", "benoormed", and "iline", there is in fact a very definite way I would stress them: /"vi.rə.lækt/ /"ɪk.tan(t)s/, /bɪ."nurmd/, /"aɪ.laɪn/; they don't feel as though they have "two or three possibilities".

Actually I would stress two of them differently: /Ik"tAnts/ and /I"lain/. I agree on the other two though.

In the latter case, however, I think that may be a consequence of how we each decided to pronounce the first vowel. You read it as /I/ and I read it as /aI/. I think this may be English spelling getting in the way. If you just gave me a phonemic representation /I.laIn/, I would pronounce it stressed on the second syllable; if you gave me /aI.laIn/, I would stress it on the first.

Well, "align" is /@"lain/ after all, not /"eI.lain/.

[So Haleza Grise]

I sure wish I'd paid attention in that phonetics lecture where they laid out the purported stress rules of English.

[Gulliver]

I sure wish I'd paid attention in that phonetics lecture where they laid out the purported stress rules of English.

I have my phonetics text book out in front of me. They're fairly numerous, and full of exceptions, but definitely there.

I've found a paper on JSTOR called The Accentuation of Russian Words by Morris Halle, available here. You'll need a jstor password, I imagine, or I could download it for you. That's the best I could find. Also this about grammatical function and stress.

[Drydic]

"virulact", "ictonce", "benoormed", and "iline"

[vI."rju.lækt]
["Ik.tAns] (well I want to say ["Ik.tAntsE], but that's Latin spelling pronounciation bleeding in)
[b@."nor\md] (too lazy to figure out the exact vowel quality, but NOT ; definitely inflenced by normal.)
[@."li:n]
you people are so weird.

[Jipí]

virulact, ictonce, benoormed, iline

[vaɪ.rə.ˈlækt]
[ˈɪk.təns]
[bi.ˈnuːrmd]
[i.ˈlaɪn]

you people are so weird.

no u

[Gulliver]

/ˈvɪrəlækt/
/ˈɪktɑns/
/bəˈnɔːmd/
/ˈɪlaɪn/

You people are weird.

[tezcatlip0ca]

/"vI@r\.@.%l{kt/, /"Ik.tQns/, /bI."nU@r\md/ (that's the weirdest syllable I've ever seen) and /"aI.laIn/

[Astraios]

/ˈvɪrəlækt/
/ˈɪktɑns/
/bəˈnɔːmd/
/ˈɪlaɪn/

You people are weird.

QFT.

[Nortaneous]

There are certain rules in English, but give you a real word like extant and even the dictionary isn't sure, or fake words like virulact, ictonce, benoormed, iline and you've got no clue how they'd be stressed.

/ˈvir(j)əˌlækt/, /ˈɪktəns/, /bəˈnormd/, I have no idea
^ ...how did that /j/ get there? I feel like it should be there, but I don't think that's something I'd ever say.

[Basilius]

Yes, I know it's supposedly arbitrary. But there are people who say that English stress is rule-governed, and as a native speaker I do seem to have something of an idea of where a newly encountered word should be stressed. Does anyone have any interesting materials on how it works in Russian? (English materials, that is.)

No, everything written in English reflects approaches that were tried and rejected 50 or 80 years ago.

Not that it's hugely different with what has been written in Russian, but chapter 1 in this book (Djvu) is a very decent attempt at a complete and adequate description. (The other two chapters describe the diachronic background.)

Basically: yes, there are rules; no, stress position is not generally predictable {from segmental composition of a form}.

If you know the derivational history of a form (just morpheme composition may happen to be insufficient) and underlying accentual characteristics of the word it's derived from (again, just surface stress position in the dictionary form will often be not enough), then you can predict the stress position in that derived form in most cases (although there'll be some lexicalized exceptions).

[TaylorS]

I thought Russian had initial stress?

I would guess the usual tendency in English is to give a new word initial stress unless there is analogy with words with other stress patterns.

[Basilius]

I thought Russian had initial stress?

???!?

{Although - if that's the impression you've got from listening to Russian speech samples, it may be a curious thing, in fact. Russian does have a quite pronounced initial intensity, and English seems to be different in this respect.}

[TomHChappell]

I thought Russian had initial stress?

Well, for a non-Russian, arriving in Russia could, initially, be stressful; but I suppose that's not what you meant.

[vec]

I thought Russian had initial stress?

Nope, it has irregular stress.

I would guess the usual tendency in English is to give a new word initial stress unless there is analogy with words with other stress patterns.

I would say that the rules are probably roughly something like this:
Germanic-looking words get initial stress unless they start with a prefix that was stressless in Proto-Germanic such as be- or whatevz. Some old French loans group here.
Overtly French-looking and Arabic-looking words get final stress.
Spanish, Latin and Italian-looking words get paenultimate stress. Less obvious French loans group here.
I've heard people pronounce what I know to be German loans with paenultimate stress so I don't think there's a built-in rule regarding German-looking words.

[linguoboy]

I thought Russian had initial stress?

Well, for a non-Russian, arriving in Russia could, initially, be stressful; but I suppose that's not what you meant.

Wow, pipped by Eddy in the lame pun game. Kinda makes you think of hanging your hat up. (Doesn't it? Please?)

[zompist]

I would say that the rules are probably roughly something like this:
Germanic-looking words get initial stress unless they start with a prefix that was stressless in Proto-Germanic such as be- or whatevz. Some old French loans group here.

That's more or less correct, I think.

Spanish, Latin and Italian-looking words get paenultimate stress. Less obvious French loans group here.

But this one isn't. You're forgetting the huge class of words with antepenultimate stress (e.g. adequate, abstinent, balcony, democracy, habitual, machinery, impoverish, educate, efficiency, amity, photography).

Even worse, there's a large number of words with even earlier stress: advertisement (American pronunciation), agriculture, alimony, amiable, isolating, degeneracy, illustrator, legitimacy, lesbianism, literature, nominative, ordinary, participle, proprietary, television, testimony...

There's also a fair number of verbs and adjectives with final stress: reject, abuse, abort, compare, decay, innate, insure, irate, juxtapose, occur, oppose, perceive, perverse, precise, pretend, pursue, replace, suffice, surprise...

[Astraios]

literature, .. ordinary, participle, proprietary, television

For me these words either have three syllables (líterature, órdinary, propríetary), or have post-antepenultimate stress (partíciple, televísion), so I think you need an American pronunciation label on them too.

[makvas]

advertisement (American pronunciation), agriculture, alimony

I almost feel like, at least in my dialect (south-midwestern American English?), that the primary and secondary stresses are switching positions in these words, giving a penultimate stress.