Stress question

[Ralph Cleminson]

On  Mon, 14 Feb  Richard Robin wrote:
> One thing to keep in mind is that the OVOJ/OVYJ ending is often a
> matter of free variation. For example, there's the metro station
> SepuxOvskaya (as all my acquaintances pronounce it), but the metro
> recording insists on SepuxovskAya. I have also heard variant
> stresses for semestrOvyj/-ovOj. There must be a bunch of others
> besides jazykovyj (supposedly 'tongue') vs. jazykovoj (language).
>
> -----
I'm pretty sure that twenty years ago the recording used to say
Serpukh'ovskaja.  This, together with the responses regarding the
microwave, and the fact that both Avanesov (1959) and Ozhegov (1975
ed.) give only semestr'ovyj (and I can't recall hearing anything
else), suggest a movement in spoken Russian towards desinential
stress for some types of adjective.  (I think we should ignore for
these purposes those examples such as vr'emennyj/vremenn'oj where the
stress makes a semantic distinction.)  This is a tiny and inadequate
sample, but somehow the idea seems plausible in the context of
general impressions.  Has anyone done any proper work on this?  If
not, there may be a PhD in it for someone.

Another thought.  It does happen that non-standard stress and/or
inflection are characteristic of professional jargons.  (If you think
who writes the textbooks, you'll realise how professor'a and
uchitel'ja became standard.)  If this is the case here, it would
explain how Serpukhovsk'aja would occur in the language of metro
workers (and hence in their announcements?) before that of the
general public.  And I assume that the examples of semestrov'oj were
heard in universities...



R.M.Cleminson,
Professor of Slavonic Studies,
University of Portsmouth,
Park Building,
King Henry I Street,
Portsmouth PO1 2DZ
tel. +44 23 92 846143, fax: +44 23 92 846040

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