Russian grammar
Russian literary syntax is a combination of a Church Slavonic heritage, a variety of loaned and adopted constructs, and a standardized vernacular foundation.
Russian dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms discarded by the literary language.
Various terms are used to describe Russian grammar with the meaning they have in standard Russian discussions of historical grammar, as opposed to the meaning they have in descriptions of the English language; in particular, aorist, imperfect, etc., are considered verbal tenses, rather than aspects, because ancient examples of them are attested for both perfective and imperfective verbs.
This principle is relevant for masculine singular nouns of the second declension (see below) and adjectives, and for all plural paradigms (with no gender distinction).
Formerly (as in the bylinas) short adjectives appeared in all other forms and roles, which are not used in the modern language, but are nonetheless understandable to Russian speakers as they are declined exactly like nouns of the corresponding gender.
These interrogatives are used by scholars to denote "usual" questions for correspondent grammatical cases (prepositional is used with о): (кто?)
Russian has several classes of numerals ([имена] числительные): cardinal, ordinal, collective, and also fractional constructions; also it has other types of words, relative to numbers: collective adverbial forms (вдвоём), multiplicative (двойной) and counting-system (двоичный) adjectives, some numeric-pronominal and indefinite quantity words (сколько, много, несколько).
The past tense is made to agree in gender with the subject, for it is the participle in an originally periphrastic perfect formed (like the perfect passive tense in Latin) with the present tense of the verb "to be" быть [bɨtʲ], which is now omitted except for rare archaic effect, usually in set phrases (откуда есть пошла земля русская [ɐtˈkudə jesʲtʲ pɐˈʂla zʲɪˈmlʲa ˈruskəjə], "whence is come the Russian land", the opening of the Primary Chronicle in modern spelling).
The ancient aorist, imperfect, and (periphrastic) pluperfect have been lost, though the aorist sporadically occurs in secular literature as late as the second half of the eighteenth century, and survives as an odd form in direct narration (а он пойди да скажи [ɐ on pɐjˈdʲi də skɐˈʐɨ], etc., exactly equivalent to the English colloquial "so he goes and says"), recategorized as a usage of the imperative.
The present tense of the verb быть is today normally used only in the third-person singular form, есть, which is often used for all the persons and numbers.
[14] As late as the nineteenth century, the full conjugation, which today is extremely archaic, was somewhat more natural: forms occur in the Synodal Bible, in Dostoevsky and in the bylinas (былины [bɨˈlʲinɨ]) or oral folk-epics, which were transcribed at that time.
The paradigm shows as well as anything else the Indo-European affinity of Russian: The infinitive is the basic form of a verb for most purposes of study.
Note that due to phonological effects, both -ться and -тся endings (latter is used for present-future tense of a 3rd person reflexive verb; see below) are pronounced as [t͡sə] or [tsə] and often cause misspellings even among native speakers.
Russian verbs can form three moods (наклонения): indicative (изъявительное), conditional (сослагательное) and imperative (повелительное).
Plural (including polite на вы) second-person form is made by adding -те to singular one: говорю 'I speak' – говори – говорите, забуду 'I shall forget' – забудь – забудьте, клею 'I glue' – клей – клейте.
Due to the extensive semantic information they contain, Russian verbs of motion pose difficulties for non-native learners at all levels of study.
[17] Unprefixed verbs of motion, which are all imperfective, divide into pairs based on the direction of the movement (uni- or multidirectional — sometimes referred to as determinate/indeterminate or definite/indefinite).
See below for the specific information on manner and object of transport:[21] Motion verbs combine with prefixes to form new aspectual pairs, which lose the distinction of directionality, but gain spatial or temporal meanings.
In addition to the meanings conveyed by the prefix and the simplex motion verb, prepositional phrases also contribute to the expression of path in Russian.
Other: Other: Подвезти – give someone a lift, e.g.: Other: With transitive verbs, delivering or dropping something off (agent does not remain), e.g.: Other: Characterizing the duration of a journey, especially when it is long, e.g.: Other: Other: Other: Changing residence, e.g.:I moved to another city.Я переехала в другой город.
Other: Quantified movement, e.g.:The driver covered 50 kilometers.Водитель наездил 50 километров.I had 2500 flight hours in Boeing 737.Я налетал 2500 часов на Боинге 737.
Adverbial participles are usually active, but passive constructions may be formed using adverbial participle forms of the verb быть (present будучи "being", very rarely past бывши "having been"); these may be combined with either an adjectival participle in the instrumental case (Будучи раненным, боец оставался в строю – Being wounded, the combatant remained in the row), or a short adjective in the nominative (Бывши один раз наказан, он больше так не делал – Having been punished once, he didn't do it any more).
[25][26] In standard Russian, adverbial participles are considered a feature of bookish speech; in colloquial language they are usually replaced with single adjectival participles or constructions with verbs: Пообедав, я пошёл гулять ("Having eaten, I went for a walk") → Я пообедал и пошёл гулять ("I ate and went for a walk").
Russian has on hand a set of prefixes, prepositional and adverbial in nature, as well as diminutive, augmentative, and frequentative suffixes.
In the twentieth century, abbreviated components frequently appeared in compounds: Basic word order, both in conversation and written language, is subject–verb–object.
For example, the words in the phrase "я пошёл в магазин" ('I went to the shop') can be arranged: while maintaining grammatical correctness.
One possible classification of such sentences distinguishes:[28] Unlike in standard English, multiple negatives are compulsory in Russian, as in "никто никогда никому ничего не прощает" [nʲɪkˈto nʲɪkɐɡˈda nʲɪkɐˈmu nʲɪtɕɪˈvo nʲɪ prɐɕˈɕæjɪt] ('No-one ever forgives anyone for anything' literally, "no one never to no-one nothing does not forgive").
In practice it is more common to answer "нет" and subsequently extend with a negated verb paralleling the usage in English.
The final five words in modern spelling, "князьям слава а дружине аминь" [knʲɪˈzʲjam ˈslavə ɐ druˈʐɨnʲɪ ɐˈmʲinʲ] can be understood either as "Glory to the princes and to their retinue!
Among the last known examples in literary Russian occurs in Radishchev's Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (Путешествие из Петербурга в Москву [pʊtʲɪˈʂɛstvʲɪje ɪs pʲɪtʲɪrˈburɡə v mɐˈskvu]), 1790: Wikimedia projects:
