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The logic behind Russian verbs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 3 16 February 2010 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||
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When I began to learn the noble Russian language long ago, I also produced some of my usual green sheets for the verbs. But they have disappeared, probably because I didn't find them intuitive enough. Now I want to make new green sheets, but I am more ambitious this time, so I have tried to think about the principles behind the tables.
First: there are factors that are so regular that you don't need to mark them at every single paradigm. For instance the reflexive (or passive) marker is either -cя (after consonant) or -сь (after vowel, except with the active present participle). And there are regularly two sets of endings, one with the vowels а, и and у, the other with я, ы and ю. It is the preceding consonant that decides which series to use, and this happens in such a regular way that you don't have to reduplicate every single table in your system. Slightly more problematic are the consonant changes in certain verbs, for instance з or д --> ж. There are two patterns in those cases where the change occurs: it can hit all forms in the present tense (резать -> режу, cut/carve), or just the 1. person singular (видеть --> вижу, видешь,.., to see). In such a case I prefer a graphical marker for each pattern - graphical markers have the advantage that they can be memorized as one sign which even can be recalled almost instantly (contrary to a long explanation in words or a list of actual forms). The consonant changes have to be memorized with each verb, but luckily many verbs have a stem vowels that so the say shield the ending from the stem (f.ex. in the regular 'a' paradigm: читать --> читаю (read)). The downside to this is that you can't see on a verb on -ать whether the -a- actually is preserved in the present tense forms, so you have to learn the exceptions by heart ... but not necessarily by memorizing long rows of verbs. Another case where a graphical marker is relevant is the accent patterns in the present tense. There are three: alwas stress on the stem, always on the ending or on the ending in 1.p. singular and 3.p.plural (I imagine these as respectively :|, |: and .|'). Again the advantage of thinking such patterns graphically is that a graphical association doesn't interrupt your mental stream of words, it just modifies its course. These factors function more or less independently of each other, so if you blindly illustrate every combination you will end up with an astronomical number of tables. In my Russian-Danish dictionary from Gyldendal there are 63 different tables, and every verb is marked with one of them. An additional problem is that some verbs have an infix in the infinitive, that is dropped in the present tense forms: -овать, -евать. And finally not all forms exist for each and every verb, or they acquire a different meaning. This has something to do with the separation between perfective and imperfective verbs, which is fundamental to Russian grammar in general. For instance the present form of a perfective verbs has a futuric meaning, so mostly the grammars deny that these verbs have a present - instead they have a future (in contrast the futuric meaning of an imperfective verb is expressed with a combination of a futuric form of the verb 'to be' буду plus the infinitive). But this distinction is of course foolish. The form is the same, but the meaning is modified in a foreseeable way, so there is no need to have two different names for the exact same form. I would like to have a green table that use the markers I mentioned instead of multiplying the number of paradigms, but first I'll have to check the possibilities with several grammars, and this will take time. Edited by Iversen on 16 February 2010 at 4:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5434 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 2 of 3 17 February 2010 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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рéзать SS рéжут; Impf: 1. (Pf. раз-, от-, по-, and на-) cut, slice, e.g. Óн рéзал сыр Acc на куски Acc; 2. (Pf. за-) slaughter, butcher; 3. (no Pf.) stab · рéзать слух grate on the ears
That's the description given in "5000 Russian Words" by Leed/Paperno. The SS at the beginning means stem stress both in singular and in plural forms. SE would be stem stress in singular and end stress in plural. Moving stress is denoted by M, like ходить MS. Then it says that the verb is imperfective and gives its three different meanings, along with the perfective versions for each. For verbs of motion you're given information about whether it's on-way or no-one-way and its complement is mentioned. The government is always included if the verb requires a different case than accusative. Besides this compressed format the book lists all forms explicitely. The information in the header line is complete, though. If there are any other exceptions, like irregular past forms of идти, they are given both in the header line and in the explicit list. I'm not sure whether one can really digest this compressed format for learning the verb. And apart from that there are adjectives, adverbs and nouns, which get the same treatment in the book. I think that flashcards with all forms of a word listed can't be much more overwhelming than a complete but rather cryptic description. It might help to highlight irregular endings, stress changes and so on with colours, so that you basically ignore everything that is not coloured, because it's regular. The exact same layout of all cards would allow to spot immediately where a word has irregular twists, and this is the information that you really want to keep in mind. I haven't come to terms with how to get a hold on all of this myself yet. I'll probably go for high amounts of audio input instead of cards. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5588 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English | Message 3 of 3 18 February 2010 at 10:49am | IP Logged | ||
Langenscheidt's dictionary gives only 28 patterns, and every verb is followed by the pattern number in brackets. Same for declensions. I think these could be made into very convenient, easy to check sheet(s) and kept next to the dictionary, instead of inside of it. No need for full tables either, just highlight the relevant changes. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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