PREFACE

This book aims at giving a systematic exposition of Russian morphology, pronunciation and spelling for foreigners studying Russian without a teacher and for teachers of Russian. In this book, syntax is touched upon only briefly and in con­nection with morphology, when the uses of a morphological form are explained.

Particular attention has been paid to the following points of Russian grammar, which, in the opinion of the author, may prove to be difficult for English-speaking students to grasp: the gender of the noun and the agreement in gender of a word with its head-noun, the meanings and uses of the cases with and without prepositions; the aspects of the verb and their use, the classification of verbs into productive-type and non-productive-type verbs, and word-building.

A short chapter at the beginning of the book deals with the main peculiarities of Russian pronunciation and spelling.
Much attention has been devoted to stress.
Not being a theoretical grammar, the present book contains no definitions of the grammatical categories.
All the grammar material is expounded in tables accompanied by notes giving the most essential explanations.
Each chapter is preceded by General Remarks setting forth the principal peculiarities of the part of speech concerned.
All explanations are based on examples from colloquial Russian, from fiction, newspapers or magazines.
Only the most essential rules of Russian spelling are dealt with.

To facilitate the student's work on the meanings and uses of the cases, the uses are given first" without prepositions and then with prepositions; in the tables, the prepositions are arranged in alphabetic order, first those governing one case and then those governing several cases.

The chapters "Main Peculiarities of Russian Pronunciation and Spelling" (pp. 11-33), "Main Types of Stress in Nouns" (pp. 64-73), and "Main Types of Verbs" (pp. 280-288) have been written by Prof. P. S. Kuznetsov. Tables Nos. 79-82 (on the use of the aspects of Russian verbs) and 85, 88, 94, 96-98 have been compiled by V. S. Belevitskaya-Khalizeva.

Author

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PUBLISHERS' NOTE

The 6th edition of this Short Russian Reference Grammar mainly repeats the 1st edition. To meet the numerous requests of students and teachers, all illustrative examples have been supplied with Eng­lish translations. The translator has kept to the original sentence structure as close as possible to enable the student to see all the peculiarities of Russian construction; for the same reason the exam­ples from poetry have been rendered in English in prose.

ABBREVIATIONS OF NAMES OF AUTHORS QUOTED

Акс. — Аксаков С. Т.
Аре. — Арсёньев В. К.
А. Т.—Толстой А. Н.
Бар. — Баратынский Е. А.
Б. Пол. —Подевбй Б. Н.
Г. — Гоголь Н. В.
Гарш. — Гаршин В. М.
Герц. — Герцен А. И.
Гонч. — Гончаров И. А.
Горб. — Горбатов Б. Л.
Гр.—Грибоедов А. С.
Жук. — Жуковский В. А.
Заг.—Загоскин М. Н.
Кр. — Крылов И. А.
Кор. — Короленко В. Г.
Л. — Лермонтов М. Ю.
Л.-К. — Лёбедев-Кумач В. И.
Л. Т. — Толстбй Л. Н.
М. — Майков А. Н.
М. Г. — Максим Горький
Н. Остр. — Островский Н. А.
Нев. — Неверов А. С.
Некр.—Некрасов Н. А.
Ник. — Никитин И. С.
О. —Ошанин Л. И.
П. — Пушкин А. С.
Павл. — Павленко П. А.
С.-М.—Соколбв-Микитбв И. С.
Т. — Тургенев И. С.
Тютч. — Тютчев Ф. И.
Фад. — Фадеев А. А.
Фурм. — Фурманов Д. А.
Ч. —Чёхов А. П.
Эрен.—Эренбург И. Г.
Яз. — Языков Н. М.