more pronunciation

[John Dingley]

I too would like to thank Patricia Chaput for her comprehensive
treatment of phenomena such as s"ezd (s,jest) and predyduschchij.
However, in speaking about postindustrial'nyj she says:
"If these words were to be russified we might expect "i" to
become "y" ..." I wonder? This point bears in on the thorny
status of (i) and (y) in Modern Russian. If one adopts the
position of the Moscow School (Baudouin, Reformatskij, Avanesov)
that (i) and (y) are mere allophones of one phoneme, then on the
boundary in postindustrial'nyj (y) would be obligatorily
pronounced. On the other hand, the Leningrad School (Shcherba,
Matusevich, Gvozdev) considers (i) and (y) to be separate
phonemes, and so (i) would be quite possible in
postindustrial'nyj. Certainly in days of yore the Moscow School
would seem to have right on its side, witness iskat' - syskat',
idti - bezydennyj, etc, but today things might be different. For
example, Avanesov himself warns against pronouncing v izbe as
(v,iz,b,e), ot Ivana as (at,ivan-). And with the velars, Avanesov
admits that the "soft" pronunciation is very widespread, e.g.
k Ivanu (k,ivanu), smex i gore (s,m,ex,igor-).

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