An Accentological Study of a 17th Century North Russian Manuscript

Nelly Lindgren

The accent system of a manuscript from Pinega (Archangelsk region) is described in order to investigate how the Early Old Russian system is preserved: to classify the changes; and to find out which principles influence the place of stress in a word. It is compared with the original Early Old Russian system comprising three accent paradigms, a, b and c, and with modern North Russian dialects. The material is presented in entirety, i.e. it treats all accentuated rythmic groups with primary substantives and derivates in the manuscript—about 1600 forms in all. The orthographic system and use of diacritic marks are also analysed.

The Early Old Russian paradigmatic accent system was destroyed by the 17th century. The new productive declensions I and II had undergone the greatest changes within the accent system. Substantives with archaic stem types preserved the old accent, which is interpreted to be related to morphological changes in these stems. The a.p. a is demonstrated to have fewer changes than other accent paradigms. Substantives originally having mobile stress show many deviations from the Early Old Russian pattern, some groups assimilate root stress. The a.p. b has the largest number of vacillations and is especially unstable in the declensions I and II. The derivates built up their own accent system, related to word-building clusters instead of to the accent paradigm of deriving stems. Distinctions between the orthotonic and enclinomena forms are demonstrated to be weakened. Substantives of the a.p. a preserve their accent. The a.p. b and c show vacillations between a stable stress and stress retraction on proclitlcs.

Thus the a.p. a is opposed to both b and c, as a stable accent paradigm to unstable ones. The opposition of three accent paradigms in the language is indicated to be replaced by a declension type opposition, and the opposition of singular and plural forms. The new system, similar to the modern Russian and connected with the morphological structure, is not yet formed by the 17th century.

Stockholm 1990. ISBN 91-22-01373-3. ISSN 0585-3575. Libris reference   — Buy at the lowest prices among books in Sweden.