Sussex R., Cubberley P. The Slavic Languages

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Stress (fixed):

Initial: Czech, Slovak, Sorbian

Penult: Polish

Antepenult: Macedonian

Dialects may exhibit transitional phenomena: Eastern Slovak has penultimate

stress, like Polish; Lower Sorbian has such a strong secondary stress on the penult

that the exact status of the stress position is a matter of some dispute (indeed, all the

West Slavic languages have a marked secondary stress on the ‘‘other’’ syllable –

initial or penultimate – in longer words). Some Kashubian dialects have initial,

some penultimate and some free stress (10.4.2.1).

The intensity-stress languages differ considerably in the nature of their stress. The

fixed-stress languages exhibit a less energetic type of stress, and there is relatively less

difference in energy between stressed and unstressed syllables. Little contrastive

information is available on the relative strength of stress, though Stieber (1969:

65), for instance, claims that Polish stress is stronger than Czech. The higher degree

of stress mobility involved in antepenultimate as opposed to initial stress (e.g. Pol

¨student, stu¨denta, studen¨tami) may suggest a potentially freer, and therefore stron-

ger, stress. The unstressed vowels consequently retain much of the phonetic quality

which they would have under stress. The primary acoustic component of this stress is

pitch. On the other hand, the free-stress languages show a more energetic stress, with

a more perceptible difference in phonetic quality between stressed and unstressed

vowels. Ukrainian probably has the weakest stress of the free-stress languages, while

Russian, Belarusian and, to a lesser extent, Bulgarian and Slovenian exhibit stronger

contrast between stressed and unstressed vowels. This stress is acoustically signalled

by energy and length rather than by mere pitch. Stressed vowels tend to be longer

than unstressed vowels.

Two important questions arise over the placing and identity of stress or pitch:

1. Do fixed-stress languages have stress exceptions?

2. Dofree-stresslanguageshavepredictablestress –andifso,towhatextent?

3.5.1.1 Exceptions in fixed-stress languages

The fixed-stress languages do have stress exceptions, which fall into two major

classes: lexical irregularities and clitics. (In this section stress on the fixed-stress

languages is indicated by a preceding prime – as in IPA, since the acute has other

functions in most of these languages.)

a. Lexical

Words with atypical stress are mostly of foreign origin, and may

resist assimilation to native stress patterns over long periods of time.

3.5 Suprasegmentals 179

It is sometimes possible to isolate such exceptions by their language of

origin, or by their form in the receiving language. S

ewc (1968: 27)

reports several classes from Sorbian:

1. Antepenultimate rather than initial stress:

a. Words in -ita (Ger -ita

t) and some in -ija (Ger -ei, -ion):

(119a) Sorb aw¨torita, uni¨wersita, demon¨stracija

b. Verbs in -owac

or -erowac

with foreign stems:

(119b) Sorb tele¨fonowac

, ¨studowac

, mar¨kerowac

2. Words which preserve the stress of the language of origin:

(119c) Sorb te¨orija, litera¨tura, stu¨dent

Polish has a number of nouns stressed on the antepenult. Most of

these words are foreign, including most nouns in -ik-/-yk-:

(120a) Pol uni ¨wersytet, ¨opera, ¨muzyka, po¨lityka, ¨klinika

[GenSg]

They also include a few native Polish phrases:

(120b) w¨ogo

le ‘in general’

and some forms of verbs with appended enclitic forms of the

auxiliary:

(120c) ¨bylis

cie ‘you [Pl] were’

Many of these exceptions are now commonly regularized in edu-

cated speech, either by dropping the post-tonic syllable (uni¨wer-

stet, w¨ogle) or by simply shifting the stress (uniwer¨sytet).

Macedonian also shows some ‘‘irregular’’ stress, mainly in for-

eign words. The regular Macedonian stress is antepenult:

(121a) Mac ¨sinovi ‘sons’ si ¨novite ‘the sons’

But some recent foreign borrowings may show different stress:

(121b) Mac litera¨tura ‘literature’ litera¨turen ‘literary’

In one morphological class the stress is penultimate, namely the

verbal noun in -jk

i (the result of fairly recent ellipsis from -ek

i):

(121c) Mac no¨sejk

i ‘carrying’

180 3. Phonology

In contrast, irregular lexical stress in Czech and Slovak is less

frequent. These languages exert a strong unifying pressure on

foreign words to conform to initial-stress patterns, and non-initial

stress is felt to have an obviously foreign nature. The possibility of

secondary stress on the penult and the availability of long vowels

are alternatives to irregular stress:

(122) Cz ¨ litera

tura ensemble ([¨ansaømbl

])

b. Clitics

The fixed-stress languages, however, do have other, native, exceptions

to ‘‘normal’’ stress, particularly in respect of clitics and affixes related

to clitics. Clitics are by default unstressed. As individual words they

bear no stress, but when combined with adjacent words they may

cause the stress to shift, including onto themselves, since in principle

they form one ‘‘phonetic word’’ with their host.

1. Proclitics

Proclitics, e.g. prepositions, attach to the following word. In

initial-stress languages, proclitics naturally attract the stress in

‘preposition þ noun’ phrases:

(123) ‘to town’ Cz, USorb ¨do me

sta Slk ¨do mesta

The negative particle ne in these languages is stressed and is even

joined orthographically:

(124) ‘I don’t think’ Cz, Slk ¨ nemyslı

m Sorb ¨njemyslim

This also affects a preposed auxiliary:

(125) ‘I won’t write’ Cz ¨nebudu psa

t Slk ¨nebudem pı

sat’

USorb ¨njebudu pisac

In penult and antepenult stress languages the same effect may

occur on short host forms:

(126) Pol ¨nie wiem ‘I don’t know’ ¨raz ¨na rok ‘once a year’

(127) Mac ¨ne znam ‘I don’t know’ ¨s

to sakas

‘what do you want?’

In some free-stress languages, prepositions in adverbial ‘pre-

position þ noun’ phrases may also attract the stress:

(128a) Rus ¨na gory ‘to (up into) the mountains’, cf. Bel na ¨hory

(128b) Rus ¨za ruku ‘(take) by the hand’

3.5 Suprasegmentals 181

While shifts of this sort (being originally effects of the Proto-Slavic

pitch system) used to occur generally in Russian, they are slowly

being removed, as they already have been in Belarusian, and are

now firmly retained only in clearly adverbial phrases like (128b)

above, but not (128a).

2. Enclitics

Enclitics attach to the preceding word. They are usually particles or

conjunctions, but may also be pronouns, and they tend to occupy the

second or ‘‘Wackernagel’’ position, the first unaccented position in

the sentence. The orthography may treat enclitics as separate words

or as affixes. The main classes of Slavic enclitics are:

a. Personal and reflexive pronouns

Enclitic personal and reflexive pronouns (5.5.3) are found in all

but East Slavic, where the reflexive pronoun -sja is now attached

as an affix (or ‘postfix’) after endings; one also finds enclitics in

dialects and colloquial usage. Enclitics are usually in the oblique

cases:

(129) Slk ¨zdalo by sa ti ¨to ¨tak

seem – CondEncl – ReflEnclAccSg –

you-EnclDatSg – it-NomSg – so

‘it would seem so to you’

These clitic pronouns can sometimes be stressed, for example

when the word order makes them proclitic and they occupy the

naturally stressed position:

(130) Pol ¨jak ¨sie˛ masz? ‘how are you?’ (sie˛ [Refl AccSg] is

normally enclitic, cf. [Inf] ¨miec

sie˛ ‘to feel’)

But they do not normally attract the stress rightwards towards or

on to themselves:

(131) Mac no¨sejk

imugo‘bringing it to him’

(enclitics mu ‘to him’ [DatSg], go ‘it’ [AccSg] )

Macedonian clitic pronouns can also be proclitic when anticipat-

ing a full noun object (7.4.3.3), but they do not attract the stress,

even when appropriately placed (i.e. antepenult):

(132a) Mac ¨vidav go ‘I saw him’ (enclitic go)

182 3. Phonology

(132b) Mac go ¨vidav ¨Grozana

him Procl-Obj – I saw – Grozan Obj

‘I saw Grozan’ (proclitic go)

A related usage is found in Bulgarian with Object–Verb – Subject

order (7.4.3.3).

b. Clitic forms of the auxiliary ‘be’

Clitic forms of ‘be’, used as auxiliaries to make compound tenses,

are found in all of West and South Slavic, but not East Slavic. As

clitics they are written together with the main verb in Polish,

where they look more like inflexions, but still fail to attract or

affect the stress:

(133) Pol ¨bylis

my ‘we were’ czy¨talibys

my ‘we would have read’

Theymayevenbeattachedtoformsotherthantheverb,thatis,they

do remain separable, tending to the second position in the clause:

(134) Pol ¨Gdzies

cie ¨byli?

where þ Aux-2Pl-Encl – were

‘Where were you?’

In other languages they are written separately:

(135a) Cz ¨Uka

zal jste mu ho?

shown – Aux-2Pl-Encl – to him-DatSg-Encl – it-AccSg-Encl

‘Have you shown it to him?’

(135b) Cz ¨Koupil byste si ho?

bought – Cond-2Pl-Encl – self-DatSg-Encl – it-AccSg-Encl

‘Would you have bought it for yourself?’

In Macedonian the auxiliary is sometimes enclitic and sometimes

proclitic, but never stressed:

(136a) Mac ¨ti si ¨begal (si enclitic)

‘(they say that) you have been running’

(136b) Mac si ¨begal (si proclitic)

c. Other enclitics

The Slavic languages contain a variety of other enclitics, including:

i. question particles (Rus, Cz, Sorb, B/C/S, Blg, Mac)

(137a) B/C/S li: Je`` li o

nta`` mo? ‘Is he there?’

3.5 Suprasegmentals 183

(137b) Rus li: By

llio

nta

m? ‘Was he there?’

cf. Pol czy: ¨Czy ¨on ¨jest ¨ tam? ‘is he there?’ (non-clitic)

ii. conditional particles:

(138) Rus by: Iva

n by zna

l ‘Ivan would know.’

iii. additional markers of imperatives, or other intensifiers:

(139) Rus -ka: Slu

aj-ka ‘Listen (to me, do)!’ (Intensive)

Rus zˇ e : O

n zˇe zde

!‘He’s here!

iv. vocative reinforcers:

(140) Blg be: Iva

ne be! ‘Ivan!’

None of these enclitic words regularly attracts stress. But

virtually any syllable in a word or sentence can be emphasized,

and virtually any stressed syllable can lose at least part of its

stress in rapid speech.

3.5.1.2 Predictability in free-stress languages

In East Slavic and Bulgarian, stress is free – it can occur on any syllable of the word:

(141) Rus skovoroda

‘frying-pan’

ukla

dyvajut ‘they pack’

litografirovavs

iesja ‘having been lithographed’ [Pl]

Free stress is also mobile – it can move to another syllable in different forms of the

same word, whether within an inflexional paradigm:

(142) Bel pisa

‘to write’ pis

‘I write’ pı

‘you [2 Sg] write’

Bel raka

‘river’ re

ki [NomPl]

or in word-formation processes:

(143) Bel zo

lata ‘gold’ [Noun] zalaty

‘golden’

Bel so

xnuc

‘to dry’ [Imprfv] vy

saxnuc

[Prfv]

Even native speakers make mistakes with stress. There are some guidelines to stress

location: for example, foreign words often have non-mobile stress, and the stress is

often located in the same place as in the donor language, particularly with recent

borrowings. Most of the clues to stress are morphophonological (rather than

lexical or phonological): it is sometimes possible to locate the stress, given certain

information about the inflexional pattern of a given root or its affixes.

Within a paradigm the stress may stay on the stem (‘‘fixed-stem stress’’):

(144) Bel ‘cloud’: vo

blaka vo

blaku [DatSg] vo

blaki [NomPl]

184 3. Phonology

on the inflexion (‘‘fixed-end stress’’):

(145) Bel ‘sparrow’: verabe

j [NomSg] verab

[GenSg] verab

[NomPl]

on the prefix:

(146) Bel ‘to write out’ [Prfv]: vy

pisac

[Inf] vy

pis

u ‘I shall write out’

or on the suffix:

(147) Bel ‘pupil (fem.)’: vuc

anı

ca [NomSg] vuc

anı

cy [NomPl]

vuc

anı

c [GenPl]

These are relatively easy instances, defined lexically: in a given stem, the stress has

a given position. Often, however, stress is mobile, and subject to morphophono-

logical alternation. The Russian and Belarusian prefix vy- ‘out of’ is always stressed

in perfective verbs (143, 146), and usually in nouns derived from the perfective stem:

(148) Rus vy

-zvat

‘to call’ [Prfv] vy

-zov ‘call’

but not normally in imperfectives:

(149) Rus vy-zyva

‘to call’ [Imprfv]

But vy- is the only Russian or Belarusian prefix to behave in this way. More

frequent are shifts between the grammatical forms of stem and inflexion. Of the

five free-stress languages, Bulgarian is the least complex, thanks largely to the loss

of its case system:

(150a) Blg dus

‘soul’ dus

[VocSg] dus

[NomPl]

dus

ta ‘the soul’

(150b) Blg kost ‘bone’ ko

sti [Pl] kostta

‘the bone’

(150c) Blg ve

sel ‘happy’ veselja

k ‘happy man’

Stress shifts occur within the verb system:

(151a) Blg mo

ga ‘I can’ mozˇa

x ‘I could’ [Aor]

(151b) Rus mogu

‘I can’ mo

zˇes

‘you [Sg] can’

It is possible to identify areas of individual paradigms where stress shifts are more

likely to occur. The plural of nouns, for instance, may differ from the singular:

(152a) Bel ‘brother’: brat [NomSg] bra

ta [GenSg] braty

[NomPl]

‘window’: akno

[NomSg] vo

kny [NomPl]

(152b) Rus ‘wall’: stena

[NomSg] steny

[GenSg] ste

ny [NomPl]

3.5 Suprasegmentals 185

The accusative singular of feminine nouns may differ from the rest of the singular

paradigm:

(153) Rus ruka

‘arm’ ru

ku [AccSg] rukı

[GenSg] ru

ki [NomPl]

Russian masculine nominative plurals in -a are always end-stressed, and the

inflexions of the rest of their plural paradigm are also stressed:

(154) Rus ‘professor’: profe

ssor [NomSg] profe

ssora [GenSg]

professora

[NomPl] professoro

v [GenPl] (etc.)

Feminine inflexions for short-form adjectives and l-participles are more likely to

attract stress than other inflexions:

(155) Rus zˇit’ ‘to live’; Past tense zˇil, zˇila

, zˇ ı

lo, zˇ ı

Furthermore, some roots are inherently marked as fixed-end-stressed. In these, if

the suffix or ending is zero, the stress falls on the last syllable of the root:

(156a) Rus ‘table’: stol ({stol þ ø

}) stola

[GenSg] stoly

[NomPl]

(156b) Ukr ‘was’: buv [buu

] [Masc] ({bul þ ø

})

bula

[Fem] bulo

[Neut] buly

[Plur]

The citation forms (infinitive for verbs, nominative singular for nouns, etc.) are not

reliable guides to the location or behavior of stress, and there is no simple rule for

determining it. There have, however, been many valuable attempts at formalizing

stress behavior in these languages.

3.5.2 Quantity

Length is not a distinctive property of Slavic consonants. In some Slavic languages

(morpho-)phonological rules can give rise to double consonants, like the instru-

mental singular of some feminine i-stem nouns in Ukrainian (5.5.1.4):

(157) ‘night’: Ukr nic

[NomSg] nı

ju [InstrSg]

cf. Rus noc

Double consonants may also occur intervocally across morpheme boundaries,

specifically ‘prefix þ root’ and ‘root þ suffix’:

(158a) Slk pod-dany

‘subjected’ (cf. po-dany

‘handed to’)

(158b) ‘judge’: Bel suddzja

Ukr suddja

(cf. Rus sud

)

(158c) Rus napı

san-nyj ‘written’

186 3. Phonology

and root-internally in borrowings:

(159) Rus A

nna ‘Anna’ gru

ppa ‘group’

But such native geminates are often pronounced as a single consonant, and always

in Czech (see above 3.4.3.3). In Russian single pronunciation is relatively rare, but

interestingly it occurs in the root ross-: Rossı

ja ‘Russia’, rossı

jskij ‘Russian’ (and in

the parallel ‘‘ethnic’’ root russk-, but here regularly because of the adjacent con-

sonant /k/); otherwise (intervocal) native geminates always have a morpheme

boundary and are pronounced long.

Vowel length was phonemic in Indo-European and in late Proto-Slavic. In

the modern Slavic languages it is phonemic only in Czech, Slovak, Slovenian and

B/C/S. It survived in Polish until the sixteenth century. Slovenian shows the

weakest utilization of length, which is contrastive only in stressed final syllables

and monosyllables. Other stressed syllables have been uniformly lengthened and

unstressed have been shortened. In the tonal variant of Slovenian, only falling

tones contrast for length (since there is no short rising tone):

(160) Sln Short Long: Tonal Long: Non-tonal

bra

t ‘brother’ bra

t ‘read’ (Supine) bra

spı

‘sleep!’ (2 Sg) spı

‘he sleeps’ spı

p ‘stack, heap’ ku

p ‘purchase’ ku

The vowel /

/ is always short, and vocalic /r

/ (or /

r/) always long, while the other

vowels may be either short or long.

In B/C/S length is a more important part of the phonological system. The two

tones are contrasted for length, making four types of pitch accent in all, as seen in

(161a–b). The quantity is phonemically contrastive, as in these minimal pairs:

(161a) B/C/S gra`` d (short falling) ‘hail’ gra

d (long falling) ‘town, city’

(161b) B/C/S va

ljati (short rising) ‘to be good’ va

ljati (long rising) ‘to roll’

In addition, any post-tonic syllable may also be long or short, and here length is

distinctive also:

(162a) B/C/S stva

r ‘thing’ [LocSg] stva

ri [GenPl] stva



This length contrast is often accompanied by tonal changes elsewhere in the word:

(162b) B/C/S zˇ e

na ‘woman’ [GenPl] ze

na

Vocalic /r

/ also may be long or short:

(163a) B/C/S Tr`` st (short falling) ‘Trieste’ t

rst (long falling) ‘cane’

(163b) B/C/S tr`pati (short rising) ‘to throw’ tr

peti (long rising) ‘to endure’

3.5 Suprasegmentals 187

In Czech and Slovak we find minimal pairs which contrast for length:

(164a) Cz vada ‘fault’ va

da ‘quarrel’

(164b) Cz piji ‘I drink’ pijı

‘they drink’

(164c) Slk pas ‘passport’ pa

s ‘belt’

Like B/C/S, Czech and Slovak also have contrastive length on unstressed (¼ post-

tonic) vowels. Any syllable in Czech or Slovak may be long, including in Slovak the

vocalic /r

/, which are only short in Czech. The long and short vowels are not fully

paired, since the long partner is often a diphthong:

(165a) Cz Short i e a o u r

Long ı¯



u/(



u/ou

––

(165b) Slk Short i e a a

our

Long ı¯



e/i



a/i



o/u



u/i

 l



In Slovak the long/short contrast is neutralized by a special Slovak Rhythmic Law:

long vowels, which include the diphthongs, cannot occur in consecutive syllables.

The second syllable is usually shortened:

(166) Slk pekny

‘nice’  kra

sny ‘beautiful’ cf. Cz kra

sny

myslı

m ‘I think’  chva

lim ‘I praise’ cf. Cz chva

lı

The exceptions often involve diphthongs, and most occur in ‘prefix þ root’ or

‘root þ suffix’ combinations:

(167a) Slk compound: tisı

c-na

sobny

‘a thousandfold’

(167b) Slk ‘prefix þ root’: za

-sielka ‘parcel’ (i.e. not *za

selka)

(167c) Slk ‘root þ inflexion’: chva

l-ia ‘they praise’

(167d) Slk ‘root þ suffix’: mliek-a

r ‘milkman’

v-ı

‘peacock’s’

The length of comparable vowels between these four languages does not always

agree. Such variations arise from several causes: the lengthening of non-final

stressed syllables in Slovenian, and its lack of atonic length; the leftwards move-

ment of stress and new rising tones in B/C/S (3.5.3); and the non-parallel evolution

of individual sounds. The Slovenian  /B/C/S correspondences are given in 3.5.3

below. In Czech and Slovak vowels agree for length in the majority of cases. The

exceptions are partly covered by the Slovak Rhythmic Law, and by regular

phonological rules, like the equivalence of Cz u

and Slk

o. Others include:

Czech Slovak

‘to give’ da

t dat’

‘summer’ le

to leto

188 3. Phonology