Stress in neuter nouns

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

I've only noticed recently (after 3.5 years of learning Russian) that the stress in the nominative plural form of neuter nouns falls on the first syllable, unlike on the second, as in the singular: письма, лица, слова. Does this apply to all Russian neuter nouns in the nom. pl.? Thanks in advance.

Comments

[krl-pgh.livejournal.com]

Plural пИсьма, лИца, but словА.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

So there is a rule, and слова is an exception?

[oryx_and_crake]

There is no rule as far as I know. I can list a hundred of words in plural where stress falls on the second syllable.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

OK. I'll just have to learn each one separately)))

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

Nope, no rule. There is a certain pattern that nouns of shifting stress will follow, but there is no rule for determining which nouns fall into a shifting stress pattern.

[krl-pgh.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. I think there is a pattern there, but less simple one. Notice that in singular письмО, лицО, окнО have a stress on the second (last) syllable, and their plurals follow the same pattern, while слОво (I am sure there are other words too) has a stress on the first syllable in singular and on the second syllable in plural.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

Right - so what is this rule (and does it have a name in Russian), and is it related to other sing/pl stress rules in words like овца?

[miconazole.livejournal.com]

My textbook says stress in two-syllable neuter words tends to shift to the other syllable when they're pluralised. Probably plenty of exceptions though.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

No, in a lot of them they do shift to the other syllable (письма, лица) but in a lot of them they don't. Seems Russian has some half-fossilised stress rules, but they don't always apply (((

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately. You may be interested in obtaining a stress dictionary of Russian. That might help to somehow group words into different categories based on how they behave in terms of the stress shift.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

It has no name, and is a bit complicated. Maybe I made it seem to easy - I said there's a pattern, but in fact there are a few possible patterns.
There are two kinds of shifting stress. One is shifting where the stress shifts from a syllable of the stem in all sg. forms to the ending in all plural forms, and similarly, where stress is on the ending in all sg forms and retracts one syllable in all pl forms.
Then there's the anomalous stress pattern. In this pattern, the nominative and accusative plural forms have stress on the first syllable and the oblique pl forms have end stress. The singular forms in this paradigm are either all on the first syllable or all on the last syllable.
Finally, there's the case of retraction of stress for some feminine nouns (e.g. головА / гОлову ; душА / дУшу)

See: Levin, Maurice. "Russian Declension and Conjugation." Slavica Publishers.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

OK. Thanks a lot. You say that in the anomalous stress pattern, the stress is different in the oblique (not nom. and acc.) cases, and, furthermore, that all the sg. forms are stressed on the same syllable. Is овца, for example, an exception, or does it belong to a completely different pattern?

This may seem like quite a pointless question, actually, but I ask out of love of the language.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

I found one. The wonderful resource slovari.yandex.ru has M. V. Zarva's stress dictionary here: http://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/zarva

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's one I've seen.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

N/A forms have the same stress patterns only when they are the same, so for inanimates. There is also apparently a G pl anomaly I have missed, which would affect овца, which would otherwise be shifting, not anomalous.

[chiyo-no-saru.livejournal.com]

Also, the singular isn't слоВО.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

I know, I know, I realise now that I shouldn't have included слово...