10 

 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE 



To a speaker of English, the principal distinguishing characteristics of Russian 

 would seem to be: 



1. A system of six grammatical cases for nouns, pronouns, adjectives 

 and numbers . 



2. The phenomenon of gender(masculine, feminine and neuter) for nouns 

 and adjectives. 



3. Great freedom of word order, made possible by the complex case 

 system. 



4. Lack of the definite ("the") or indefinite("a,an") article. 



5. Verbal system employing only two simple tenses: past and non-past 

 ("present"). 



6. Verbal aspect: the choice between two Russian verbs, distinguished 

 by a nuance of completion, for every one English verb. 



7. Reflexive verbs: verb forms with a special suffix which adds passive, 

 reflexive, reciprocal or no extra meaning, depending on the particular 

 verb. 



8. Six verbals: four participles(verbal adjectives) and two gerunds(verbal 

 adverbs). 



9. Lack of present forms("is,are") of the verb "to be". 

 10. Double negatives with maintenance of negation. 



Grammatical Terminology 



Traditional grammatical terminology will be employed in this manual, not because 

 it has functional relevance, but simply because it will be found in other texts and diction- 

 aries which a learner will have occasion to consult. One should use these ancient terms 

 merely as labels for identifying grammatical categories peculiar to Russian, being care- 

 ful, however, not to regard grammatical phenomena in Russian and English as comparable 

 only because of a shared tradition of terminology. 



CASE SYSTEM 



There are six grammatical cases in Russian and their traditional names are: 

 Nominative(N), Accusative(A), Genitive(G), Dative(D), Prepositional(P) and Instrumental 

 (I). The differences between the elaborate case system of Russian and the English system 

 of two cases(possessive and non-possessive) may be demonstrated most readily by com- 

 paring the treatment in each language of four nouns in various simple sentence types. 



The table is there. Ctoji TaM. 



1) The lake is there. Osepo TaM. 

 The map is there. KapTa TaM. 

 The door is there. ^Bgpj^ Ta,M. 



2) I see the table/lake/map/door. fl BMKy CTOJi/osepo/KapTy/flBepb. 



3) I know the table's/lake's/map's fl snaio pasMep CTOJia/osepa/HapTH 



/door's size. /flBepw. 



4) He is walking toward the table Oh Hfl'eT k CTOJiy 



/lake/map /door . /osepy/HapTe/flBspM . 



5) That's on the table/lake/nap/door. oto na CTOJie/osepe/KapTe/flBepM. 



6) That's behind the table/lake oto sa CTOJiOM/oaepoM 



/map/door. /KapTow/flBepBio. 



