The plural declension of башка

[Brian Hayden]

Dear SEELANGers,

What is the plural declension of башка́? While a quick scan of the
dictionaries on dic.academic.ru suggests that the literary standard is башки́
(etc.), I’ve had several Russians insist that the proper form is бо́шки, бо́
шек, etc. (Others say that башка doesn’t have a plural declension.)
Бо́шки seems very strange to me. While, as I’m well aware, the *
pronunciation* of letters often changes due to vowel reduction and stress
shift in the declined (or conjugated) forms of a word, I can only think of
two other words where a stress shift results in a change in spelling.

These words are:

· заря́, in the sense of“reveille, taps”, which becomes зо́рю. The other
senses of the word seem to have a more regular declension.

· Расти́ in the past tense

And then, though these two words don’t have anything to do with official
orthography, they do seem to have something to do with the same а --»
о mutation
pattern. I’m thinking of the non-normative conjugated forms of
звони́ть[but pronounced, naturally, something like «
звани́ть» in standard Russian] and плати́ть as пло́тит, зво́нит, etc.
(There is a caveat here, though: I’m not sure exactly how a person who
would naturally say«Он пло́тит за это» would pronounce the infinitive.
Would he say плати́ть or пло́тить?)

As you’ll probably notice, all of these words are two-syllable, with accent
on the second syllable in the nominative or infinitive form, but with
stress shifting onto a first syllable “o” in at least some of their
declined or conjugated forms.

These, then, are my three questions: Is there really some sort of pattern
here, or am I imagining it? If there is a pattern, then what other words
does it affect? And how does this pattern fit in with the other, more
familiar vowel reduction patterns (я --» и, о --» а, е --» и, etc.).?

Sincerely,

Brian

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