Problems of stress

[Alina Israeli]

While I agree with the reduction, I would suggest that it may take a  
different route: Vsevoldna or even VsevLdna, by L I marked a vocalic  
l which is found in colloquial versions of mLdec (molodec), poLchka  
(polochka) and others.

We do find secondary stresses in case of polu- pòlugólyj,  
pòluzhivój, for ex. Without it all of those, polu- would be  
pronounced as pAlu-. By contrast polukrug, polukrovka, poloumnyj have  
only one stress and polu- is pronounced as palu- and polo- is  
pronounced pala-. Unfortunately, Russian dictionaries still haven't  
adopted the idea of marking secondary stresses. These secondary  
stresses would be useful in compound words: those fully absorbed into  
the Russian language might not have a secondary stress:  
telefonogramma, thoses newer ones might still have it:  
tèlefòtopanoráma. Fortunately, the quality of the vowel always  
tells you if there is a secondary stress since we do not use O and E  
in unstressed positions.

As for pozavchera, there are probably two styles of pronunciation of  
that word, which a good dictionary should have reflected, but they  
still don't. For emphasis one could expect pòzavherá:

—Eto bylo vchera? — Net, pozavchera.

  Pozavchera ko mne v gosti priexali rodstvenniki.

The pause after pozavchera is conducive to full style of  
pronunciation, hence secondary stress.

On Sep 7, 2008, at 5:04 PM, xmas at UKR.NET wrote:

> Dear John,    as you say yourself,     > the tendency is to 'lose'  
> some of the unstressed syllables, so that the above-mentioned  
> patronymic comes out sounding something like Sevovna.     this form  
> can be connected to the colloquial form of the name Vsevolod --  
> Seva. I would say that the more possible variant would be closer to  
> Vsevovna.     and a classical example of contraction in full forms  
> of names would be Alexandr Alexandrovich -- San-Sanych.    my name  
> would sound intead of Mar_i_ya Nikol_a_yevna -- M_a_rya  
> Nikol_a_vna.          > It is, however, my impression that in  
> recent times there has been an increasing tendency in Russian to     
> > resort to the expedient of secondary stresses, especially in  
> sequences involving prefixes or prepositions,    > leading to the  
> appearance of such forms as:
>> pzavcher
>> chrez nedlju
>     these are not secondary  stresses. this way of speech is  
> characteristic for Moscow and couple of other cities, like  
> Voronezh.     this pronunciation is recognized all over post-Soviet  
> space as 'Moscow'.     it has a couple of particular features one  
> of them is the one you noticed -- reduction of the stressed  
> syllable and prolongation of the preceding sylalble which a result  
> sounds as it stressed but in the speech the general rhythm still  
> follows the normative stresses of the words so the speech sounds  
> kind of syncopated.
> With best regards,
> Maria

Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------