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A Comprehensive Russian Grammar, Third Edition - Learn Russian (PDFDrive) Part-4
A Comprehensive Russian Grammar, Third Edition - Learn Russian (PDFDrive) Part-4
A Comprehensive Russian Grammar, Third Edition - Learn Russian (PDFDrive) Part-4
When Professor Terence Wade died in 2005, he was already well advanced
in his plans to produce a third edition of A Comprehensive Russian Grammar.
This would have included appendices on geographical terms, irregular verbs,
irregular noun plurals, indeclinable nouns and abbreviations.
Since it remains unclear just what form these appendices would take
I have chosen not to attempt to second-guess. Indeed, it remains my
conviction that Professor Wade’s grammar is the most comprehensive and
illuminating of all Russian grammars currently available for student use.
It would not be advisable to make it unwieldy or too detailed for its own
good!
My purpose in preparing the third edition is not to seek to emulate
Professor Wade’s ambition, but rather to enhance the status and significance
of the grammar throughout the scholarly world by consolidation and a few
select additions. I have been guided by Professor Wade’s own desire, in
planning the third edition, to ‘ensure that the essential balance of the book
is maintained’. I have therefore chosen to expand the sources and reference
materials used, including writers and texts from well-known modern
Russian writers, as well as from the political and journalistic discourse
of post-Soviet Russia. In only one or two cases have explanations been
‘tweaked’, but the grammar itself remains largely as Professor Wade
presented it in the first edition in 1992.
I am indebted to colleagues from the Department of European Studies
and Modern Languages of the University of Bath for their advice and
support during my time spent working on this edition, and for their
invaluable help with recent developments in the language, especially
xxx Preface to the Third Edition
I wish to thank the following for advising on aspects of the book: Natalya
Bogoslavskaya (University of Leeds), Sheelagh Graham (University of
Strathclyde), Larissa Ryazanova (Edinburgh University), who also read
the page proofs, Professor Dennis Ward (University of Edinburgh), Nijole
White (University of Strathclyde); also Dr Marina Kozyreva (Moscow and
Leeds Universities) for reading through a late draft and writing a helpful
report. I am particularly grateful to my specialist readers, Dr R. Bivon
(University of Essex, formerly of the University of East Anglia) and
Dr Svetlana Miloslavskaya (Pushkin Institute, Moscow) for writing detailed
reports at an early stage, thus enabling me to make substantial improvements.
I also valued a lengthy consultation with Svetlana Miloslavskaya which
allowed me to make amendments to the final draft. My editor, Professor
Michael Holman (University of Leeds), supplied helpful and detailed
critical analyses of each chapter during the writing of the grammar and
I am most grateful to him for his support and encouragement and for
the many insights that he provided. I should also like to thank Professor
Glanville Price (University College of Wales), general editor of Blackwell’s
series of grammars of European languages, for his comments on some early
chapters, particularly that on verbs. Any errors are, of course, entirely the
responsibility of the author.
I wish to thank my late mother, who first encouraged me to learn Russian.
The book is dedicated to my wife, May, who bore with me throughout the
thousands of hours and nine drafts that went into this grammar.
xxxii Acknowledgements
Note
(a) Certain letters with diacritics and accents which appear in the standard
BSI system (ё for ё, j for й, é for э, d for ы) are used without diacritics
and accents here.
(b) The ligatures used over certain combinations of letters in the standard
LC system (u, t s) are often omitted by other users.
(c) An apostrophe (’) for the soft sign (ь) is used only in the
bibliography.
(d) The endings -ый /-ий are rendered as -y in names.
The following symbols from the IPA are used in the Introduction for the
phonetic transcription of Russian words.
Vowels
i as in ил [il]
f as in пыл [pfl]
o as the first vowel in игл [o2gla]
p as the first vowel in дыр [dp2ra]
2 Introduction 3
q as in лес [Fqs]
e as in весь [LeJ]
a as in рад [rat]
æ as in пять [IæK]
v as the first vowel in одIн [v2Bin]
m as the first vowel in хорошB [xmrv2Ro]
o as in мох [mox]
ö as in тётя [2KöKm]
u as in бук [buk]
ü as in ключ [kFütR]
Semi-consonant/semi-vowel
j as in бой [boj]
Consonants
p as in пол [pol]
I as in пёс [Ios]
b as in бак [bak]
A as in бел [Aql]
t as in том [tom]
K as in тем [Kqm]
d as in дом [dom]
B as in день [BeH]
k as in как [kak]
D as in кем [Dqm]
M as in гол [Mol]
E as in гид [Eit]
f as in флBра [2florm]
C as in фен [Cqn]
v as in вот [vot]
L as in винB [Lo2no]
s as in сам [sam]
J as in сев [Jqf]
z as in зуб [zup]
O as in зJбра [2Oqbrm]
R as in шум [ Rum]
Q as in жук [Quk]
x as in хам [xam]
N as in хIмик [2NiGok]
SS as in щек [ S So2ka]
ts as in цех [tsqx]
4 Introduction 2–3
tR as in чин [tRin]
m as in мол [mol]
G as in мел [Gql]
n as in нос [nos]
H as in нет [Hqt]
l as in лак [lak]
F as in ляг [Fak]
r as in рак [rak]
P as in рек [Po2ka]
j as in @ма [2jamm]
Pronunciation
3 Stressed vowels