kofe, stress, language, dogma, but no opera

[Tatyana Buzina]

Hello,
actually, regarding "lazit'," the 4-volume dictionary of Russian (ed. by Evgenieva) doesn't list the verb "zalazit'," it lists only "zalezt'" with imperfective "zalezat'" and no problems in conjugation with either. "Zalazit'" must then be regarded as an incorrect form (apparently derived from lazit'); similar situation exists with "lozhit'" which can be heard very often but deviates from the literary norm (there is "polozhit'" but no "lozhit'," at least not in the standard Russian) and also is not listed in the same dictionary. Situation is additionally complicated (for a native speaker who just speaks the language without much by way of a linguistic analysis) by the fact that there's also the verb "lazat'" conjugated "lazaiu" etc. For many people, paradigms overlap and sometimes "lazit'" is conjugated as "lazat'."

As to dogma in language, I believe one of the questions was about the perception of different mistakes in Russia. Not everybody who resents the stem-stressed zvonit' is an open-minded linguist :), and in their everyday life, they are, indeed, dogmatic. On the other hand, being dogmatic is the only way to ensure the existence of the standard variant of whatever language. Now, of course, we might wonder whether there's a need for any norm or standard especially when it comes to stress or phonetics, but if we take this reasoning to its logical limits, we might soon arrive to a standstill described in Alice Through the Looking-Glass where Humpty-Dumpty explains to Alice that words mean only what he wants them to mean. Naturally, Alice doesn't understand his particular speak until he translates "his" words into "common" words. Should we reach that point, each of us will have their own private language and some lingua franca will emerge to help the speakers of these languages understand each other. I guess I're back to a standard variant of whatever language. 


>Hi,
>
>>This is a morphological anomaly that some prefixed verbs are
>>conjugated differently from unprefixed, i.e. lazit' - lazhu,
>>oblazit' - oblazhu, slazit' - slazhu, but with the prefix za- the
>>pattern is broken.
>
>I'm not sure Alina is right here. My 1987 Avanesov (Orf. sl. r. yaz)
>also warns against -laziyu, -laziesh', with the prefixes ob-, iz-,
>and s-. (There may be others.) This presumably means that some people
>are using these forms.
>
>However, Alina is quite right about Margaret Thatcher. Born in
>Grantham, Lincolnshire, she started life with a northern accent,
>but at an early age, she was sent by her parents to elocution lessons
>to learn rp (received pronuniciation). The parents got their money's
>worth, since their daughter ended up with what might be labelled
>super-rp, spoken by her alone.
>
>John Dingley
>
>------------
>http://dlll.yorku.ca/jding.html
>
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-- 
Tatyana V. Buzina,
Associate Professor, Chair,
Dpt. of European Languages,
Institute for Linguistics,
Russian State U for the Humanities

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