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Remarks on Phonological Boundaries in RussianAuthor(s): Michael ShapiroSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter, 1967), pp. 433-441Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/304860 .

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Remarks on Phonological Boundaries in Russian

Michael Shapiro, University of California, Los Angeles

Despite the fact that much deserved attention has been paid to Morris Halle's extremely important work The Sound Pattern of Russian (The Hague, 1959), several specific problems associated with Halle's discussion of phonological boundaries have failed to be elucidated by reviewers.' The aim of the present article is to point out the weak spots in Halle's treatment of phonological boundaries in contemporary standard Russian (CSR) and to suggest correctives where these appear to be needed.

In Sound Pattern the author ascribes five phonological boundaries to CSR (41, 49-50):

(1) the phonemic phrase boundary, which is introduced (a) at the beginning and end of sentences; (b) before and after the longest immediate constituent containing not more than two and not less than one accented vowel;

(2) the word boundary, introduced (a) before and after unaccented proclitics, enclitics, conjunctions, and adverbs; (b) after the grammatical morpheme class symbol of the imperative;2 (c) at all phonemic phrase boundaries; (d) before and after the longest immediate constituent containing a single accented vowel;

(3) prefix and preposition boundaries, introduced after prefixes and nonautonomous (unaccented) prepositions;

(4) the suffix (i.e., desinence) boundary, postulated before (a) all final inflectional suffixes consisting of the incompletely specified morpho- nemes {*a} and {*o}; (b) substantival desinences beginning in {*o} or {*a) and not followed by {j}; and

(5) an abbreviation boundary, introduced between the lexical mor- phemes of abbreviations.

It should be noted, however, that no rules are elaborated for the elimination of two or more propinquitous phonological boundaries save the one (Rule P 16b, p. 74) which effaces the word boundary before unaccented words not coincident with a phonemic phrase boundary. Thus, for example, the one-word sentence Stoj! 'Stop!' would require, according to Halle's rules, the introduction of phonemic phrase, word, and imperative boundaries, the first two superimposed on one another at the beginning

SEEJ, Vol. XI, No. 4 (1967) 433



434 The Slavic and East European Journal

of the sentence and all three superimposed at the end. Further, Halle makes no attempt to establish a hierarchy among the boundaries, though intuitively one feels the need for ranking them in accordance with their range of phonetic consequences.

The five boundaries are shown by Halle to play a determinative role in the distribution of the voicing and sharping features in obstruents as well as the distribution of compactness/diffuseness and tonality in vowels. Furthermore, boundaries are appealed to in explaining some of the differ- ences resulting from the rules of degrees of prominence among accented and unaccented vowels within a phrase.

The introduction of clearly defined phonological boundaries in con- formity with a concisely stated formal condition, viz. Halle's Condition (6) which transforms the special marker preceding the following morpheme class symbols into phonological boundaries or eliminates them altogether by the rules of morphology, must be acknowledged as an important contribution to modern phonology. However, insofar as Halle's application of this frame- work to CSR is concerned, there are several points which appear to call for further discussion. Basically, there are three kinds of criticism that can be made. First, legitimate entities (i.e., boundaries) appear to have been unnecessarily multiplied. It is clear that Halle's preposition/prefix boundary and his suffix boundary are in complementary distribution, though their phonetic consequences are not identical.8 Further, as will become apparent from the discussion below, the abbreviation boundary posited by Halle is superfluous and can simply be replaced by a word boundary. Second, the definitions of two of the five boundaries either fail to encompass the full range of data or overextend their coverage, thereby obliterating certain lines of demarcation. Thus, the phonemic phrase boundary fails to cover such items as NKVD though the latter, while containing more than two stressed vowels, nevertheless remains a phonemic phrase. Further, as will be demonstrated below, enclitics behave somewhat differently from nonenclitics and probably require the postulation of an entirely new boundary, distinct from the word boundary, before them. Third, certain constraints are attributed to boundaries or their presence invoked by Halle in cases where their effects or presence appears to be based on marginal rather than central CSR data, i.e., on possible idiosyncratic variations rather than on typical phenomena. The shortcomings outlined above over- lap to a certain extent. In this article only the first and third will be treated in any detail. A remedy for the second will merely be sketched; an adequate discussion would require a separate paper.

The abbreviation boundary is postulated by Halle mainly to suspend the rules regarding the distribution of the voicing feature in obstruent clusters.4 There are two pertinent rules, applied in order: (1) voiced



Phonological Boundaries in Russian 435

obstruent cluster --> voiceless before word boundary or phonemic phrase boundary; (2) voicing in the cluster is determined by the value of the last segment before an abbreviation boundary or a sonorant: if the last segment is voiced, so is the entire cluster; if the last segment is voiceless, so is the entire cluster. Thus, for instance, {v'izg uslisal} 'I (he, you) heard a

scream'-- [v'isk uslibl] by application of (1), while {v6t v=ditstve}

'but in childhood' -> [v6dvd'ictv'i] by application of (2).5 The claim is also advanced by Halle that profdelegat 'trade union representative' and sovparts'kola 'Soviet party school,' both of which are abbreviations, have voiceless [f] before the voiced segment [d] and voiced [v] before the voiceless segment [p], respectively, by application of (2); however, contemporary studies of abbreviations in CSR offer evidence which appears to render Halle's rule invalid at least for the present generation of speakers, if not for earlier generations as well.6

In fact, the phonology of Russian abbreviations reflects the general rules almost exactly.7 But there are certain interesting vacillations, i.e., free variation which would be impossible in the standard pronunciation of nonabbreviations.8 With respect to the feature of voicing, abbreviations conform to the rules of assimilation. Thus voiced obstruents at the end of one component of an abbreviation become voiceless when immediately contigu- ous to an initial voiceless obstruent of the following component, e.g., rabkor 'worker-correspondent' [-pk-], zavkom 'factory committee' [-fk-], Gos- muzprokat 'state music rental' [-sp-], Glavgaztopprom 'governing agency of the gas heating industry' [-st-], vtuz 'higher technological institute' [-ft-] , etc. Similarly, voiceless obstruents before voiced are nondistinctively voiced, e.g., profbjuro 'union bureau' [-vb'-], partbjuro 'party bureau' [-db'-], gosbank 'state bank' [-zb-], likbez 'liquidation of illiteracy' [-gb'-], detdom 'orphanage' [-d:-], KZOT 'labor law code' [gz-], VikMel' 'All- Russian executive committee of the railroad workers' union' [-gi-], CNIXBI 'Central cotton industry research institute' [-yb'-], etc. This assimilation, according to one investigator (Grebnev, 9), occurs without exception. However, there are some dissenting voices with respect to cases where the initial obstruent of the second component is voiced. Alekseev (24, 26) mentions the possibility of doublets but states that voicing of voiceless obstruents before voiced is more frequent. Furthermore, he also attests the fact that voiced obstruents occurring at the end of nonfinal components can optionally (cf. Sound Pattern, 65) be devoiced even before the initial voiced obstruent of the following component, e.g., ko'galanterejnyj 'leather goods (adj.)' can be pronounced in two ways: [-pg-] or [-ig-]. However, both Grebnev and Alekseev are agreed that a voiced obstruent cannot re- main voiced before a voiceless one, thus contradicting the consequences ascribed by Halle to the abbreviation boundary. It is true that the leading




Russian orthoepists, R. I. Avanesov and S. I. Ozegov, allow the retention of a voiceless obstruent before voiced in isolated cases, e.g., profbilet 'union card' [-fb'-], profdvilenie 'union movement' [-fd'v'-],1o but generally pre- scribe both the retention of voicing in voiced obstruents immediately preceding voiced and the assimilative voicing of voiceless obstruents before voiced, e.g., glavbux 'head bookkeeper' [-vb-] and partbilet 'party card' [-db'-]." Since Grebnev is the only source which adduces the testimony of informants, his information would seem to be the most reliable.12

It thus becomes apparent that Halle's abbreviation boundary can be replaced by a word boundary. The fact that voicing assimilation in abbreviations may not take place in sporadic instances can, therefore, be explained in precisely the same way that this phenomenon is explained generally at word boundaries. We are confronted here with a so-called "conceivable pause" which, without itself being realized, is signalled only by its concomitant features.13 There is no apparent reason to make a distinction between cases of the type gorod Baku 'city of Baku' and profdvizenie.

There is a rather interesting set of phenomena connected with the word boundary which we would propose to substitute for Halle's abbreviation boundary. At word boundaries in nonabbreviations voicing is nondistinctive before sonorants. Thus {trezv l'i) 'is he sober?'-- [tr'isf l'i], {g6rod moskv+?} 'city of Moscow'--> [g6rat mAskva], {m6zg olen'+a} 'deer's brain' -* [m6sk Al'en'a], etc. In abbreviations the picture is a bit more mottled. As a rule, abbreviations conform to the overall pattern, e.g., rybnadzor 'fishing control' [-pn-], Glavenergo 'main power agency' [-f-], glavvraJ 'head physician' [-fv-], medinstitut 'medical institute' [-ti-].4 However, cases in which voiced obstruents occur before sonorants are also attested, often though not always as doublets to those instances where the rule is in force, e.g., pedinstitut 'pedagogical institute' [-di-] or [-ti-], pedvuz 'teachers college' [-dv-] or [-tv-], xozrasJct 'planned economy' [-zr-] or [-sr-], fizvospitanie 'physical education' [-zv-] or [-sv-], orgvy- vody 'organization-level decisions' [-gv-] or [-kv-], sovnarkom 'council of people's commissars' [-vn-], komandarm 'army commander' [-da-], Glavlit 'chief military and civil censorship agency' [-vl'-] or [-fl'-], Svjazizdat 'state communications publishing house' [-s'i-].15 Obviously, we have here an unstable word boundary. As the abbreviation ceases to be felt as consisting of clearly segmentable parts, the word boundary is effaced and voicing becomes distinctive. The usual concomitant of this loss of a word boundary in abbreviations is a loss of subordinate stresses.'6 That is to say, the various components of the abbreviation (save the last) gradually re- linquish their stress, and the abbreviation ultimately conforms to the general rules of vowel reduction within the phonological word. For instance, sovnarxoz 'economic council' which originally had three stresses is now




pronounced with one stress, the resulting reduction of unstressed vowels, and, characteristically, a voiced [v] before [n]. It is important to note that there is a definite hierarchy of interrelated phenomena. Vowel reduction is a sufficient but not a necessary prerequisite for voicing to be distinctive in obstruents before sonorants, witness Sovinformbjuro 'Soviet news agency' [-vi-], pedinstitut [-di-], pedvuz [-dv-], muzliteratura 'musical literature' [-zl'-], etc. If, however, there is vowel reduction, then voicing is necessarily distinctive.17 In other words, if all subordinate stresses disap- pear, then the word boundary with its phonetic consequences necessarily disappears too. An excellent test case of this dual possibility is provided by adjectives containing the prefix {me)} 'inter-.' If it is assigned a subordinate stress, then the final obstruent is devoiced before sonorants, as in mezinsti- tzitskif 'interinstitutional' [-Si-], mb'"jazykovdj 'interlinguistic' [-sj-], mzBrebernyj 'intercostal' [-Sr'-], miBnaciondl'nyj 'between (Soviet) na- tionalities' [-'n-], mezamerikdnskiJ 'inter-American' [-ga-], etc.s8 If, however, these items are pronounced with one and only one stress, then the word boundary between the prefix and the rest of the word becomes a simple prefix boundary which, in turn, results in the distinctive voicing of {i}. This situation obtains as well when {me)} is used as a preposition; cf. {(6erez okn6} 'through the window' --> [6'r'Is Akn6] vs. [6ir'IzAkn6]. With respect to phonological boundaries and their phonetic consequences in CSR partbilet and its congeners differ not at all from gorod Baku, Leonid Osipovi', meV"jazykovoj, brejd-vympel 'commodore's pennant,' tr xgolovyj 'three-headed,' or cerez okno.

So far the discussion has centered on the multiplication of entities in Halle's treatment of phonological boundaries in CSR. We can now profit- ably turn to a reappraisal of certain effects attributed to boundaries in Sound Pattern. It is clear that certain phonological boundaries may prevent as well as induce the application of certain phonological rules. Segments in sequence may normally accommodate to one another or otherwise interact in the absence of a boundary, but never when it intervenes. In Sound Pattern this sort of hindering value is ascribed (without stylistic qualification) to the prefix/preposition boundary when it falls between an unstressed vowel and {j } followed by unstressed {e), e.g., zaez2dt' 'ride in' (Rule P 9c, p. 71), where the intervocalic {j) would otherwise be syncopated. No source is cited for this phenomenon, and, interestingly enough, none of the standard handbooks (cf. fn. 7) contains such a constraint. Quite the contrary, the syncope of intervocalic {j} is explicitly mentioned as taking place, i.a., also across the prefix/preposition boundary by A. Isa6enko, whose detailed and well-documented special investigation of this problem can be considered definitive.19 On the other hand, one must recognize that in a solemn, dis- tinctly articulated style of speech, the (j) need not be syncopated. The




presence of {j) may thus be said to signal the utilization of a more explicit code (style) and its absence that of a more elliptic code (style).

One of the characteristic phonetic features of Russian stressed vowels is their striking qualitative adaptation to surrounding sharped consonants. Thus, compact and grave vowels between sharped consonants acquire [i]-like transitions, while acute vowels become more closed.20 The inter- ference of word boundaries may suspend these otherwise applicable rules. In Sound Pattern it is claimed that the word boundary posited before enclitics is no different in this regard from any other word boundary. More precisely, a rule (P 10b, p. 72) is enunciated whereby ({} is said to be more compact (more open) before plain (nonsharped) segments and before word boundaries: {v6s) 'weight' -- [v'es] and {po=gorel'i) 'they burned up' [pagAr'6l'i] is distinguished from

{po-=gore l'i) 'along the hill ?' [pagAr'e I'i].21 The sole source given for this latter example is R. Jakobson and M. Halle, Fundamentals of Language (The Hague, 1956), 18. A conflicting view is enunciated by R. Kosuti6 (Gramatika ruskog jezika [Petrograd, 1919], I, 25): "At the end of a word . .. one hears a normal, central e; but if an enclitic with an initial soft consonant adheres to it, e will be nar- rowed, e.g., uz' [u;] 'already,' but: neue'li, i.e., ne-uik-li [n'i-uie'-l'i] 'really? can it be?' "22 Further on this point, there is the testimony of Dur- novo and U'akov23 who, incidentally, are listed by Koluti' as two of his informants (xxxiv-xxxv). In their transcription of the phrase dve devocki 'two girls' Durnovo and Ulakov write an open vowel for the {e) of dve but append the following remark (p. 347, note d) : "thus: dye ... but optionally also: dve." One thus discovers that Jakobson and Halle's restriction does not appear to hold (at least for some speakers) before enclitics and is, furthermore, optional even before a word boundary within a phonemic phrase containing no enclitic. It seems intuitively likely that word boundary phenomena proper hierarchically imply enclitic phenomena, i.e., what holds across word boundaries should also hold across enclitic boundaries (but not vice versa).

At this juncture an appeal to experimental data does not appear in- appropriate. It is probably relevant that native speakers asked to read Majakovskij's lines (from Sergeju Eseninu) vy v svoem urne li? 'are you out of your mind?' and vy Z takoe zagibat' umeli 'you really knew how to cuss' failed to make a difference when pronouncing the final stressed vowels (umI li/umIli). 24 Moreover, identically pronounced with a closed stressed vowel were the test items vzjdli 'they took,' nel'zj6 li 'may one,' vse li 'all?' gde-nibud' 'somewhere,' and vse-de 'supposedly all.' The evidence gathered showed that word boundaries played no role in the pronunciation of stressed nondiffuse vowels preceded by a sharp consonant and followed by a sharped consonant of an enclitic. When nonclitics followed, there was the above-




mentioned fluctuation. The example po gore li cited by Jakobson and Halle and repeated in Sound Pattern thus appears to be valid for a certain number of speakers (including the first author) but not for all,25 stylistic and individual variation being possible in this case. Nevertheless, in view of the conflicting evidence, there appear to be valid grounds for a distinction between the boundary introduced before an enclitic and all other boundaries. If the speech of the informants questioned by the present author is to be accounted for in an adequate fashion, a new phonological boundary in CSR, viz. the clitic boundary, needs to be posited.26

NOTES

1 The more substantive reviews of Sound Pattern include: B. rpHropLeB, (<<Boppoem aJ3SIoaHanIIas,> 1961, ' 1, eTp. 129-134; C. Ferguson, Language, XXXVIII (1962), 284-297; M. Romportl, Slovo a slovesnost, XXIII (1962), 282-286; D. S. Worth, IJAL, XXIX (1963), 74-79; V. J. Zeps, IJSLP, VII (1963), 129-133; A. Isa- cenko, Zt. fiir Phonetik, XVII (1964), 483-486. Only Zeps has made detailed com- ments on the phonological rules of CSR, and even his commentary is far from exhaustive. One is overwhelmed by the large number of misprints and errors in Sound Pattern, and further surprised to see that reviewers have largely ne- glected to enumerate them; thus, bombit' is misstressed on p. 69, dist is misstressed on p. 71, Rule 14b omits [u] on p. 73, brosjura does not belong in the discussion of the distribution of the sharping feature in foreign words on p. 73, Addl'f Gitler is misstressed twice in succession on p. 74, Baudouin is misspelled in the bibliography on p. 199, the translation of otcu polegcaet should read "father will begin to feel better" on p. 71, Tomson's "Foneti'eskie 'tjudy" appeared in Vol. LIII of Russkij filologic'eskij vestnik (p. 205).

2 First suggested by R. Jakobson, "Russian Conjugation," Word, IV (1948), 159. 3 In a review of Avanesov, Fonetika sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka,

in Word, XVI (1960), 152, Halle acknowledges this fact and credits R. Aber- nathy with bringing it to his attention. Cf. Ferguson, 293.

4 An obstruent cluster is defined by Halle (p. 64) as a single obstruent or several obstruents occurring in sequence regardless of intervening preposition or word boundaries. In Russian, furthermore, {v} and {v'} behave like obstruents within a phonological word unless followed by sonorants, in which case they behave like sonorants (cf. R. Jakobson, "Die Verteilung der stimmhaften und stimmlosen Geriiuschlaute im Russischen," in Festschrift fiir Max Vasmer [Berlin, 1956], 199; reprinted in his Selected Writings, I: Phonological Studies [The Hague, 1962], 505). Halle's statement (p. 63) that {*v} functions as a sonorant if followed by a sonorant and as an obstruent if followed by an obstruent is not quite correct, since in phrase-final position it is an obstruent though followed by nothing. In other words, {v} is subject to the same neutralization rule as all other obstruents in this position.

5 Typographical space between words signifies a word boundary; the equals sign (=) indicates a prefix/preposition boundary. A plus sign (+) is used to denote




the suffix boundary, despite the fact that it appears to be in complementary distribution with the prefix/preposition boundary-this to facilitate comparison with Sound Pattern.

6 Halle does not appear to have utilized the informants he lists on pp. 111-112 as the subjects for his acoustical experiments in the section on CSR phonology; however, even if they were consulted, there would appear to be little or no justification for pressing into service native speakers who were all born before the turn of the century and had lived outside the Soviet Union for from 20 to 40 years. When one considers the fact that Soviet abbreviations have scarcely any currency among older emigres, evidence gathered from such informants ceases to be convincing for CSR.

7 None of the standard authorities consulted on the rules in abbreviations- r. BaHHOIyp, <<PyccIoe cqeHnwecIoe npoaH3HomeIHHe> (M., 1948); P. H. ABaHecoB, <Pycccoe aHTepaTypHoe npoHaHomeHre>> (3-e mAg.; M., 1958); P. H. ABaHecon, <<(oHeTHEIa copeMe~Horo pycciEoro XHTepaTypHoro S aiia>>I (M., 1956); P. H. ABaHecoB C. H. Omeron, peg., <WPyccioe rHTepaTypHoe nponaHomeH~e yAapeHHe: COioBapI-cnpanBOHH'iH> (M., 1959); <rpaMMaTlaa pyccEoro rsai[1a, I: ()oHeTTHIa

H

mop oxorna

(M.: AH CCCP, 1960); ,. H. Ymaxon, "C eAeJnsi no npaBonicarnlo,

upoHSomeHH H rpammaTMce, " <<ToIKOBMi caoBapL pyccioro aai~ua>> (4 TT.; M.,

1935-1940), I--have anything to say about them. Therefore, see A. A. rpe6HeB, " (oHeTqecxoe MopqoaorqecICoe oq4opMieH e a66peB]aTyp B pyccIEOM q3ImKe," Bulletin vysokd koly ruskdho jazyka a literatury, III (1959), 5-22; and A. H. AXeIceeB, "IIpoHsaomenHe c oHnocoipaieHHnuix cmJoB 6yIBenHHIx a66peBHaTyp,"

(<Bonpocmi IfyJITypM perIi,>> IV (1963), 22-37. All examples of abbreviations are from the latter two articles unless otherwise noted.

8 The handbooks cited above rarely mention the fact that there is considerable fluctuation even in those sectors of modern Russian phonology which would appear inviolate, e.g., devoicing of obstruents in phrase-final position and before sonorants, or the change of {i} from [i] to [4] after a boundary preceded by a nonsharped segment within a phonemic phrase. The tacit orthoepic bias of most Soviet descriptions of CSR belies and obscures the fact that standard speech, whether of a Soviet or 6migr6 tinge, is hardly as homogeneous as these descriptions would lead one to believe.

9 Acronyms behave in exactly the same manner as other types of abbreviations. 10 The fact that {f} is retained in both examples appears to have marginal rather

than systematic significance for CSR, contrary to Sound Pattern (p. 74) and R. Jakobson, Selected Writings, I, 507, asterisked note. Cf. B. 'lepHiumes, <(3aIoBlos H npaBHJa pyccIHoro npoiasomeHHa>> (2-e Ha~.; CII6., 1908), 36-37; M. V. Trofimov and D. Jones, Pronunciation of Russian (Cambridge, 1923), 156, 215, 225; Vinokur, 59; E. A.

BplIsrynoBa, <<IpaRT'IqecEcaI q4oHeTHra H HHTOHarH~n pyccIoro asixa>? (M., 1963), 64; Grebnev, 9.

11 The last four examples are from Avanesov-Olegov. In their handbook lack of phonetic commentary is to be interpreted as a regular application of the general rules.

12 It is well-known that Avanesov is somewhat conservative regarding orthoepic judgments.

13 Cf. R. Jakobson, review of Avanesov, Fonetika sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka, in IJSLP, I/II (1959), 288 (reprinted in Selected Writings, I, 536).

14 Grebnev states that in relatively new abbreviations like medinstitut (cf. the older




pedinstitut) voicing usually remains nondistinctive until the abbreviation gains common currency.

15 The latter two examples are from Avanesov, Fonetika, 166. 16 Grebnev, 7-8; Alekseev, 26-28. The term "subordinate" seems preferable to

"secondary" stress. 17 There is no powerful reason why precisely the voiced variant should inevitably

appear once the word boundary has been obliterated, since speakers often are unable to relate abbreviations to their unabbreviated equivalents. One might regard this phenomenon as a pure case of spelling influence rather than morpho- phonemics.

18 Avanesov-Ozegov, esp. p. 9, ? 5.6. The grave accent (') here signifies subordinate stress.

19 A. Isa'enko, "Der Schwund des intervokalischen /j/ im Russischen," Zt. fiir Phonetik, XII (1959), 119 (cf. his Fonetika spisovnej rustiny [Bratislava, 1947], 148).

20 Avanesov, Fonetika, 101. 21 Note that by omitting discussion of any special restrictions which might attach

to word boundaries L. G. Jones contradicts this rule by implication in his "Ex- cursus on the Contextual Variants of Russian Vowels" in Sound Pattern (p. 163).

22 In Kosutid's Cyrillic phonetic transcription a circumflexed e (e) equals a closed vowel, while an e without a diacritic equals an open vowel. The transcription in the examples cited has been normalized somewhat. Though Ko'utid's example is not the most apposite possible in view of the somewhat different quality of [e] after nonsharped unpaired consonants in CSR, his statement, nevertheless, remains unequivocal.

23 H. AypHoBO, A. Ymaixo., "OnuIT 4(oHeTHPecIcOH TpacIpHIIInHH pyccIoro aHTepa- TYPHOrO IIpoH3ameHHJn," Slavia, V (1926), 342-347. Their transcription is identical to that of Kosuti6 in the respect under discussion.

24 Five native speakers of CSR were queried: B, male, born in Moscow, ca. 1930; left the Soviet Union in the 1960's; habitual language, Russian; occupation, musician and teacher. D, male, born in Harbin, Manchuria, ca. 1920, left China in the late 1950's; one of the habitual languages, Russian; occupation, graduate student. V, male, born in Moscow, ca. 1930; habitual language, Russian; occupation, Soviet exchange student. P, female, born in Moscow, ca. 1935; left the Soviet Union in the early 1960's; one of the habitual languages, Russian; occupation, graduate student. V, female, born in Tomsk, ca. 1880; left the Soviet Union in the early 1960's; habitual language, Russian; occupation, housewife. The help of Edward H. Denzler in working with the latter two informants is hereby acknowledged with thanks.

25 Roman Jakobson has reported in a personal communication that his latest dis- cussions with linguists in Moscow have indicated that there is much stylistic and individual variation possible.

26 I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend and colleague G. V. Drugoszyn for a number of valuable criticisms and suggestions. All errors or omissions are, of course, my own.



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