Russian is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European family. All Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Although no written records remain, much of the culture and religion of the Proto-Indo-European people can also be reconstructed based on their daughter cultures traditionally and continuing to inhabit most of Europe and South Asia, areas to where the Proto-Indo-Europeans migrated from their original homeland.

Periodization

No single periodization is universally accepted, but the history of the Russian language is sometimes divided into the following periods:

  • Old Russian or Old East Slavic (until ~1400)
  • Middle Russian (~1400 until ~1700)
  • Modern Russian (~1700 to the present)

The history of the Russian language is also divided into Old Russian from the 11th to 17th centuries, followed by Modern Russian. In writing, Old Church Slavonic was the standard, although from the 11th century, variations became distinguishable from Serb ones. Also in the 11th century, differences in written sources point to the slow emergence of distinct East Slavic languages.

During the pre-Kievan period, the main sources of borrowings were Germanic languages, particularly Gothic and Old Norse. In the Kievan period, however, loanwords and calques entered the vernacular primarily from Old Church Slavonic and from Byzantine Greek:

{| style="text-align: center;" cellpadding="4"

| || || ОCS = ESl || 'brief'

|-

| || || ESl = CS || 'short'

|-

| || || Gr bibliothḗkē via OCS || 'library' (archaic form)

|-

| || || Gr orthographíā via OCS calque:<br> OCS =orthós 'correct',<br> OCS =gráphō 'write' || 'spelling, orthography'

|}

Feudal and linguistic breakup (13th–14th century)

right|thumb|upright=1.15|14th-century [[Veliky Novgorod|Novgorodian children were literate enough to send each other birch-bark letters written in the Old Novgorod dialect.]]

Kievan Rus' began to decline and fragment in the 12th century. From the 12th and 13th centuries, regional phonetic and grammatical variations within Church Slavonic texts could be detected, indicating the eventual divergence of the language. Around 1200, and especially after the sack of Kiev in 1240, when Mongols and Tatars established the Golden Horde in Eastern Europe, an autonomous spoken Russian language, largely independent from written Church Slavonic, began to develop.

The Moscow period (15th–17th centuries)<!-- "Middle Russian" redirects here -->

[[File:Rus-1389-lg.png|thumb|280px|East Slavic languages in 1389. Colors represent spoken dialects. Dashed lines represent written languages:

]]

After the Golden Horde gradually disintegrated in the late 15th and early 16th century, both the political centre and the predominant dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. A scientific consensus exists that Russian and Ruthenian had definitely become distinct by this time at the latest. The official language in Russia remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the 18th century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius Smotrytsky in 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an incipient secular literature. Vocabulary was borrowed from Polish, and, through it, from German and other Western European languages. At the same time, a number of words of native (according to a general consensus among etymologists of Russian) coinage or adaptation appeared, at times replacing or supplementing the inherited Indo-European/Common Slavonic vocabulary.

{| style="text-align: center;" cellpadding="4"

| || || R; relegates (to poetic use only) ComSl = Lat oculus = E eye || 'eye'

|-

| || || P kurtka, from Lat curtus || 'a short jacket'

|-

| || || G Barhat || 'velvet'

|}

Much annalistic, hagiographic, and poetic material survives from the early Muscovite period. Nonetheless, a significant amount of philosophic and secular literature is known to have been destroyed after being proclaimed heretical.

The material following the election of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 following the Time of Troubles is rather more complete. Modern Russian literature is considered to have begun in the 17th century, with the autobiography of Avvakum and a corpus of chronique scandaleuse short stories from Moscow. Church Slavonic remained the literary language until the Petrine age (1682–1725), when its usage shrank drastically to biblical and liturgical texts. Legal acts and private letters had been, however, already written in pre-Petrine Muscovy in a less formal language, more closely reflecting spoken Russian. The first grammar of the Russian language was written by Vasily Adodurov in the 1740s, and a more influential one by Mikhail Lomonosov in 1755 (Rossijskaja grammatika).) and nominative (which is never stressed) always becomes yer-tensed (ij).

  • Although the spelling represents yer-tensing, pronunciation without yer-tensing is still possible: 'new', 'loud'.
  • In adjectives ending in ⟨-кий, -гий, -хий⟩, pronouncing without yer-tensing (and consequently with an unpalatalized consonant, as it is followed by a morphophonemic |o|; e.g. in 'loud') is considered traditional Moscow pronunciation, but is now uncommon.
  • Besides long adjectives (, , , e. g. 'blue') the spelling instead of expected * for unstressed is also used in possessive adjectives (, , , e. g. 'wolf's'; the ordinal number 'third' has the same declension) and in genitive plural forms of words ending in or (e. g. 'naughty girl', gen. pl. ; but under stress: 'bench', gen. pl. ; exceptionally, the gen. pl. of "gun" is spelled ).
  • However, in nouns indeed becomes expected untensed (ej), pronounced when unstressed (as in "hoarfrost" from PSl. ) and when stressed (as in "couch grass" from PSl. ). These words conserve in object cases in modern Russian (genitive: , ), but "beehive" and "furuncle" have genitive , .

Some yers in weak position developed as if strong to avoid overly awkward consonant clusters:

  • Proto-Slavic "stem, stalk" > (stebló) (cf. Old Czech '<!-- no article on Old Czech listing language code -->, Czech ' or (dialectal) ', Old Polish ' or '<!-- no language code in the article on Old Polish language -->, Polish ', all meaning "stalk, straw")
  • Proto-Slavic "variegated" > (pjóstryj) (cf. Polish ', but Czech ')
  • Proto-Slavic "to ring, to clank" > (zvenétʹ) (cf. Old Czech ', Czech ')

As shown, Czech and especially Polish are more tolerant of consonant clusters than Russian; but Russian is still more tolerant than Serbo-Croatian or Bulgarian: Proto-Slavic "mist, haze" > (mgla) (cf. Old Czech ', Polish ', but Serbo-Croatian ', Bulgarian (măglá)).

Loss of nasal vowels

The nasal vowels (spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet with yuses), which had developed from Common Slavic and before a consonant, were replaced with nonnasalized vowels:

  • Proto-Slavic > Russian u
  • Proto-Slavic > Russian ja (i.e. with palatalization or softening of the preceding consonant)

Examples:

  • PIE "they are" > Proto-Slavic > (sutʹ) (literary in modern Russian; cf. Old Church Slavonic (sǫtĭ), Polish ', Latin ')
  • Proto-Slavic "hand" > Russian (ruká) (cf. Polish ', Lithuanian ')
  • Proto-Slavic "meat" > Russian (mjáso) (cf. Polish ', Old Church Slavonic (męso), Old Prussian mensa, Gothic (mims), Sanskrit (māṃsa))
  • PIE "five" >> Proto-Slavic > Russian (pjátʹ) (cf. Polish ', Old Church Slavonic (pętĭ), Lithuanian ', Ancient Greek (pénte), Sanskrit (páñcan))

In the case of Proto-Slavic > Russian ja, the palatalization of the preceding consonant was due to the general Russian palatalization before all front vowels, which occurred prior to the lowering of to . If the preceding consonant was already soft, no additional palatalization occurred, and the result is written rather than when following the palatal consonants (š ž č šč c):

  • Proto-Slavic "to begin" > Russian (načatʹ) (cf. Old Church Slavonic (načęti))
  • Proto-Slavic "harvest" > Russian (žátva) (cf. Old Church Slavonic (žętva))

Nearly all occurrences of Russian (ja) following a consonant other than (l), (n) or (r) are due to nasal vowels or are recent borrowings.

Borrowings in the Uralic languages with interpolated after Common Slavonic nasal vowels have been taken to indicate that the nasal vowels existed in East Slavic until some time possibly just before the historical period.

Loss of prosodic distinctions

In earlier Common Slavic, vowel length was allophonic, an automatic concomitant to vowel quality, with short and all other vowels (including nasal vowels) long. By the end of the Common Slavic period, however, various sound changes (e.g. pre-tonic vowel shortening followed by Dybo's law) produced contrastive vowel length. This vowel length survives (to varying extents) in Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Old Polish, but was lost entirely early in the history of Russian, with almost no remnants. (A possible remnant is a distinction between two o-like vowels, e.g. and , in some Russian dialects, that may partly reflect earlier length distinctions.)

Proto-Slavic accentual distinctions (circumflex vs. acute vs. neoacute) were also lost early in the history of Russian. It has often been hypothesized that the accentual distinctions were first converted into length distinctions, as in West Slavic, followed by the loss of distinctive vowel length. Pretty much the only reflex of the accentual type is found in the stress pattern of pleophonic sequences like CereC, CoroC, ColoC (where C = any consonant); see below.

Notably, however, the position (as opposed to the type) of the accent was largely preserved in Russian as a stress-type accent (whereas the Proto-Slavic accent was a pitch accent). The complex stress patterns of Russian nouns, verbs and short adjectives are a direct inheritance from Late Common Slavic, with relatively few changes.

Pleophony and CVRC sequences

Pleophony or "full-voicing" (polnoglasie, ) is the addition of vowels on either side of and in Proto-Slavic sequences like CorC where C = any consonant. The specific sound changes involved are as follows:

  • *CerC > CereC
  • *CorC > CoroC
  • *CelC, *ColC > ColoC
  • *CьrC > CerC
  • *CъrC > CorC
  • *CьlC, *CъlC > ColC

Examples:

  • Proto-Slavic ' "bank (of a river), shore" > Russian (béreg); cf. Old Church Slavonic (brěgŭ)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "frost" > Russian (moróz); cf. Old Church Slavonic (mrazŭ)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "chaff" > Russian (polóva); cf. Old Church Slavonic (plěva)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "ear (of corn), spike" > Russian (kólos); cf. Old Church Slavonic (klasŭ)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "sickle" > Russian (serp); cf. Old Church Slavonic (srĭpŭ)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "turtle dove" > Russian (górlica); cf. Old Church Slavonic (grŭlica)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "hill" > Russian (xolm); Old Church Slavonic (xlŭmŭ)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "wolf" > Russian (volk); Old Church Slavonic (vlĭkŭ)

Note that Church Slavonic influence has made it less common in Russian than in modern Ukrainian and Belarusian:

  • Ukrainian:
  • Russian: ('Vladimir') (although a familiar form of the name in Russian is still ).

When a Proto-Slavic sequence like *CerC was accented, the position of the accent in the resulting pleophonic sequence depends on the type of accent (circumflex, acute or neoacute). This is one of the few places in Russian where different types of accents resulted in differing reflexes. In particular, a sequence like CéreC, with the stress on the first syllable, resulted from a Proto-Slavic circumflex accent, while a sequence like CeréC, with the stress on the second syllable, resulted from a Proto-Slavic acute or neoacute accent. Examples:

  • Proto-Slavic ' "town" (circumflex) > (górod)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "doorsill" (acute) > (poróg)
  • Proto-Slavic ' "king" (neoacute) > (korólʹ)

Development of *i and *y

Proto-Slavic and contrasted only after alveolars and labials. After palatals only occurred, and after velars only occurred. With the development of phonemic palatalized alveolars and labials in Old East Slavic, and no longer contrasted in any environment, and were reinterpreted as allophones of each other, becoming a single phoneme . Note that this reinterpretation entailed no change in the pronunciation and no mergers. Subsequently, (sometime between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries), the allophone of occurring after a velar consonant changed from to with subsequent palatalization of the velar. Hence, for example, Old Russian became modern . Conversely, the soft consonants were hardened, causing the allophone of to change from to .

The yat vowel

Proto-Slavic (from Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European long *ē) developed into Old Russian , distinct from (the outcome of Proto-Slavic from Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European short *e). They apparently remained distinct until the 18th century, although the timeline of the merger has been debated. The sound denoted may have been a higher sound than , possibly high-mid vs. low-mid . They still remain distinct in some Russian dialects, as well as in Ukrainian, where Proto-Slavic developed into respectively. The letter remained in use until 1918; its removal caused by far the greatest of all Russian spelling controversies.

The yo vowel

Proto-Slavic stressed developed into , spelled , when following a soft consonant but not preceding one; i.e. at word-final position or before a hard consonant. The shift happened after , which were still soft consonants at the time. The preceding consonant remained soft.

  • OR ('about which' loc. sg.) &gt; R

That has led to a number of alternations:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

! Word !! Gloss

! Word !! Gloss

|-

| <br> || merriment

| <br> || merry

|-

| <br> || to attract

| <br> || he was attracting

|-

| <br> || cheaper

| <br> || cheap

|-

| <br> || spruce-tree

| <br> || Christmas tree

|-

| <br> || to burn

| <br> || he burned

|-

| <br> || wheel-wright

| <br> || wheels

|-

| <br> || to lie down

| <br> || he lay down

|-

| <br> || Pete

| <br> || Peter

|-

| <br> || brooms

| <br> || he swept

|-

| <br> || rural

| <br> || villages

|-

| <br> || sister's

| <br> || sisters

|-

| <br> || death

| <br> || dead

|-

| <br> || six

| <br> || six-fold; with five others

|}

This development occurred prior to the merger of ѣ (yat) with е, and ѣ did not undergo this change, except by later analogy in a short list of words as of about a century ago. Nowadays, the change has been reverted in two of those exceptional words.

  • 'threading needle, bodkin'
  • 'nests'
  • 'glandule' (however 'piece of iron')
  • '[he/it is] depicted; [he/it is] imprinted (in the mind)'
  • 'stars'
  • '[he] used to yawn'
  • 'jibe'
  • () '[it is] (never) worn'
  • '[he] found'
  • 'saddles'
  • 'apprehension'
  • '[he] flowered, flourished'
  • '[he] used to put on' (this word has fallen into disuse in the standard language)
  • 'fuel, chips; instigation; firebrand' (this word has fallen into disuse in the standard language)
  • 'way-mark' (now )
  • 'mole cricket', 'mole rat' (now )

The ѣ>ё change also occurred in the Old East Slavic pronoun (from PSl. 'her' - possessive or genitive -, also used as accusative instead of original < ); then became eё (неё after a governing preposition) in modern Russian. According to the 19th-century prescriptions, the possessive and genitive were spelled eя (нея), but the accusative was spelled eе (нее). The spelling eя (нея) stems from Old Church Slavonic (also from ) and was occasionally pronounced as written (in poetry or highly formal speech), but usually both forms were pronounced as eё (неё); as a result, the 1918 spelling reform abolished that spelling distinction.

Loanwords from Church Slavonic reintroduced between a (historically) soft consonant and a hard one, creating a few new minimal pairs:

{| class="wikitable"

! colspan="2" | Church Slavonic borrowing

! colspan="2" | Native Russian cognate

|-

| <br> || 'sky' || <br> || 'roof of the mouth'

|-

| <br> || 'case (grammatical)' || <br> || 'murrain, epizooty'

|-

| <br> || 'universe' || <br> || 'settled' (f.)

|-

| <br> || 'perfect' || <br> || 'completed, committed, performed, achieved'

|}

Russian spelling does not normally distinguish stressed and following a soft consonant (and in some cases also following the unpaired consonants ), writing both as . However, dictionaries notate as when pronounced as .

This sound change also occurred in Belarusian as seen in the word for "ice": Belarusian and Russian from PSL. .

Vowel reduction

Modern Russian has extensive reduction of unstressed vowels, with the following mergers:

  • original unstressed and following a hard consonant are merged as (pronounced or , depending on position)
  • original unstressed and following a hard consonant are merged as , or as if is considered a phoneme (pronounced )
  • original unstressed , , following a soft consonant are merged as (all are pronounced )

The underlying vowel resurfaces when stressed in related forms or words, cf. (baldá) "sledgehammer", with genitive plural (bald) , vs. (kormá) , with genitive plural (korm) . The spelling consistently reflects the underlying vowel, even in cases where the vowel never surfaces as stressed in any words or forms (e.g. the first syllables of (xorošó) "well (adverb)" and (sapožók) "boot") and hence the spelling is purely etymological. See Vowel reduction in Russian for more details.

There are exceptions to the rule given above: for example, "video" is pronounced as rather than .

Consonants

Consonant cluster simplification

Simplification of Common Slavic and to :

  • Common Slavonic "soap" > Russian: (mylo) (cf. Polish )

Consonant clusters created by the loss of yers were sometimes simplified, but are still preserved in spelling:

  • (zdravstvujte) "hello" (first v rarely pronounced; such a pronunciation might indicate that the speaker intends to give the word its archaic meaning "be healthy")

:* (sérdce) "heart" (d not pronounced), but d is pronounced in the genitive plural (sérdec) )

:* (solnce) "sun" (l not pronounced), but l is pronounced in adjectival (sólnečnyj) "solar" and diminutive (sólnyško) "small sun, sweetheart"

Development of palatalized consonants

Around the tenth century, Russian may have already had paired coronal fricatives and sonorants so that could have contrasted with , but any possible contrasts were limited to specific environments. Otherwise, palatalized consonants appeared allophonically before front vowels. When the yers were lost, the palatalization initially triggered by high vowels remained, creating minimal pairs like ('given') and ('tribute'). At the same time, , which was already a part of the vocalic system, was reanalyzed as an allophone of after hard consonants, prompting leveling that caused vowels to alternate according to the preceding consonant rather than vice versa.

Sometime between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, the velars became allophonically palatalized before , which caused its pronunciation to change from to . This is reflected in spelling, which writes e.g. (gíbkij) rather than (gybkyj).

Depalatalization

The palatalized unpaired consonants depalatalized at some point, with becoming retroflex and . This did not happen, however, to , which remains to this day as palatalized . Similarly did not depalatalize, becoming (formerly and still occasionally ). The depalatalization of is largely not reflected in spelling, which still writes e.g. (šitʹ), rather than (šytʹ), despite the pronunciation .

Paired palatalized consonants other than and sometimes and eventually lost their palatalization when followed by another consonant. This is generally reflected in spelling. Examples:

  • Proto-Slavic "to stick" > Russian (lʹnutʹ)
  • Proto-Slavic "sun" > Russian (sólnce)
  • Proto-Slavic "ox-yoke" > Russian (jarmó); but Proto-Slavic "bitter" > Russian (gorʹkij)
  • Proto-Slavic "ancient" > Russian (drévnij)
  • Proto-Slavic "cowberry" >> Russian (brusníka)

Incomplete early palatalizations

There is a tendency to maintain intermediate ancient , , etc. before front vowels, in contrast to other Slavic languages. This is the so-called incomplete second and third palatalizations:

  • Ukrainian
  • Russian: ('leg' dat.)

It is debated whether these palatalizations never occurred in these cases or were due to later analogical developments. A relevant data point in this respect is the Old Novgorod dialect, where the second palatalization is not reflected in spelling and may never have happened.

Development of palatal consonants

The Proto-Slavic palatal series of consonants (not to be confused with the later palatalized consonants that developed in Russian) developed as follows:

  • The palatal resonants merged with the new palatalized consonants *lʲ *nʲ *rʲ that developed before Proto-Slavic front vowels.
  • The palatal plosives merged with . Note, however, that Proto-Slavic appear as (commonly notated šč žd and pronounced respectively, although was formerly pronounced , as its transcription suggests) in words borrowed from Old Church Slavonic.
  • The palatal clusters developed into sounds denoted respectively and either or (nowadays normatively pronounced , although there is a strong tendency to instead pronounce and as hard ).
  • The palatal fricatives hardened into retroflex (although the affricate remained as soft ).

Degemination

Many double consonants have become degeminated but are still written with two letters.

(In a 1968 study, long remains long in only half of the words in which it appears written, but long did so only a sixth of the time. The study, however, did not distinguish spelling from actual historical pronunciation, since it included loanwords in which consonants were written doubled but never pronounced long in Russian.)

Effect of loanwords

A number of the phonological features of Russian are attributable to the introduction of loanwords (especially from non-Slavic languages), including:

  • Sequences of two vowels within a morpheme. Only a handful of such words, like 'spider' and 'slap in the face' are native.
  • 'poet'. From French .
  • 'mourning'. From German .
  • Word-initial , except for the prefix э-.
  • 'era'. From German .
  • Word-initial . (Proto-Slavic *a- > Russian ja-)
  • 'avenue. From French .
  • 'swindle'. From French .
  • 'lamb'. From Church Slavonic
  • The phoneme (see Ef (Cyrillic) for more information).
  • 'phoneme'. From Greek .
  • 'ether'. From Greek .
  • 'fiasco'. From Italian . <!-- Not sure if this is directly from Italian -->
  • The occurrence of non-palatalized consonants before within roots. (The initial of a suffix or flexion invariably triggers palatalization of an immediately preceding consonant, as in / / .)
  • The sequence within a morpheme.
  • ) 'gin' from English.
  • 'jazz' from English.

Morphology and syntax

Some of the morphological characteristics of Russian are:

  • Loss of the vocative case
  • Loss of the aorist and imperfect tenses (still preserved in Old Russian)
  • Loss of the short adjective declensions except in the nominative
  • Preservation of all Proto-Slavic participles

See also

  • History of the Slavic languages
  • Russian language
  • Old East Slavic language
  • Russian alphabet
  • Russian orthography
  • Reforms of Russian orthography
  • Russian phonology
  • Russian grammar
  • Russian etymology
  • Russian Language Institute

References

Bibliography

  • Breuillard, Jean & Stéphane Viellard. Histoire de la langue russe: des origines au XVIII<sup>e</sup> siècle. Paris: Institut d'études slaves, 2015.
  • Chernykh, Pavel Yakovlevich. Историко-этимологический словарь современного русского языка [= Historical and etymological dictionary of modern Russian language]. 2 vols. Moscow: Русский язык, 1993.
  • Clemens, Paul & Elena Chapovalova. Les mots russes par la racine: essai de vocabulaire russe contemporain par l'étymologie. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002.
  • Comrie, Bernard, Gerald Stone, & Maria Polinsky, eds. The Russian language in the twentieth century, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  • Kiparsky, Valentin. Russische historische Grammatik. 3 vols. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1963/1967/1975.
  • Partial English translation: Russian historical grammar, vol. 1: The development of the sound system. Trans. J. Ian Press. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1979.
  • Orel, Vladimir. Russian etymological dictionary. 4 vols. Eds. Vitaly Shevoroshkin & Cindy Drover-Davidson. Calgary, Canada: Octavia Press (vols. 1–3) & Theophania Publishing (vol. 4), 2007–2011.
  • Sakhno, Serguei. Dictionnaire russe-français d'étymologie comparée: correspondences lexicales historiques. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001 –
  • Vasmer, Max. Этимологический словарь русского языка [= Etymological dictionary of the Russian language]. Trans. & expanded by Oleg Trubachov. 4 vols. Moscow: Прогресс, 1959–1961; 1964–73.
  • Vlasto, Alexis Peter. A linguistic history of Russia to the end of the eighteenth century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
  • Wade, Terence. Russian etymological dictionary. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1996 –