The plural declension of башка

Sat Aug 3 22:59:21 UTC 2013

Good advice?

http://tinyurl.com/k2ef597

John Dingley

On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Alina Israeli <aisrael at american.edu> wrote:
> Those are different issues even though they look similar.
>
> On башка all three are probably correct, if this makes sense. The word is
> Turkic and not fully assimilated, we also have  баш на баш with the same
> root. So for the standard "elegant" Russian one should say "башка" and not
> try to make a plural of it. So staying within norms, one would say "У них
> башка варит", even though each person has a head of his own. Of course the
> idea of "elegant" Russian in combination with башка is an oxymoron, since
> башка is colloquial to begin with. So in colloquial language, for example
> teen's language, башка will have a plural form бóшки:
>
> Фигасе! – поразился Колобков. – Эти бомжи, что, все поголовно бошками
> ударились? – Спроси их, – пожала плечами чертовка.
> (http://www.litmir.net/br/?b=105005&p=10)
>
> Call it substandard or whatever, but it's part of the language.
>
> We find the same pattern in пальто (non-declinable) — пóльта:
>
> Которые говорят: пальто с прохожего снято - опять-таки мало интересу. Польта
> пошли дешевенькие. Не рентабельно. (Зощенко.
> http://www.litmir.net/br/?b=46216)
> On the scale of "non-standardness" польта is worse than бошки, and could be
> used only in jest, mimiking the uneducated style.
>
> But in fact those native speakers don't know the exceptions but they know
> the rule: the pattern for башка is like for вода and it makes perfect sense.
>
> Now заря and расти are spelling anomalies. Заря could have been easily
> spelled зоря and pronounced the same way. In fact it should have been
> spelled зоря, as we get the plural "А зóри здесь тихие". Someone somewhere
> (historians of the language could tell you better) decided that this word is
> going to be spelled the Old Church Slavonic way. The same decision was made
> for расти, because had it been spelled рости it would have made more sense
> and fewer stupid school rules. The typical school rule is called Проверяется
> ударением, i.e. you find a stressed form of the word: трава or трова? —
> трáвы, hence трава. But in case of расти it's the other way around; the
> school rule says: under stress whatever you hear, but not under stress — the
> other one. A total contradiction to the main rule, which makes no sense and
> no one bothers to explain to the poor kiddies why such a nonsense is made
> into a rule.
>
> Thus you get расти but рос, and by extension росла.
>
> Now звонить, which is logically spelled with O, since we have звон has been
> a cause celebrate of the purists for 200 years. Somehow they picked on this
> verb back then and don't let it go. There are many verbs where the stress
> has shifted since the days of Pushkin, and no one suffers because of that.
> It should have been become он звóнит, like он вáрит, which used to be вари´т
> (and sometimes still is).
>
> Плотит on the other hand is the result on analogy, which is one of the
> engines of change. If there can be мочить-мóчит, молить-мóлит,
> звонить-звóнит, why not платить-плóтит? Speakers who make mistakes feel the
> trend (although it doesn't mean that we should always follow them, not until
> the mistake becomes very common). There is even an occasional дóрит from
> дарить, which only proves that we may be dealing with a future trend.
>
> Alina Israeli
>
>
> On Aug 3, 2013, at 6:24 AM, Brian Hayden <bkhayden1990 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> 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, бо́шек, 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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