Russian conjugation: Computer synthesis of Russian verb forms
Frederik Kortlandt · Leiden Repository (Leiden University) · 1972
The program presented in this paper is a computerized version of Roman Jakobson's article "Russian Conjugation" in Word 4 (1948), 155-67 (abbr.: J).Wherever the program and Jakobson's rules yield different results, this is indicated below in square brackets.The language in which the program is stated is ALGOL 60.A comprehensive comment is added to the program in order to make it accessible to both linguists without an extensive knowledge of Programming languages and mathematicians who are not familiär with the Russian verb System.The input of the Computer consists of the program and a list of verb stems.The generated forrns are the phonemic representations of the inflnitive, the preterit (masc.sg., fem.sg., neuter sg., plural), the present (Ist sg., 2nd sg., 3rd sg., Ist pl., 2nd pl., 3rd pl.), and the imperative (2nd sg., 2nd pl.).[The inclusive imperative is not generated because it has no special form (J 2.122).The aspect of the verb is not taken into account; therefore, the irregularly stressed form rad'ila is not generated.There is one major difference between the language described by Jakobson and the contemporary Standard language in favour of which I have decided: the unstressed alternant of the present tense suffix a is u in Jakobson's paper (J 2.121) but a according to the modern Standard. 1 For the rest I have stuck rather closely to Jakobson's description.]* The author studied Mathematics and Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam, where he now is a member of the Staff of the Slavic Department.His dissertation Modelling the Phoneme: New Trends in East European Phonemic Theory was recently published by Mouton. 1 Cf.R. I. Avanesov and S. I. Ozegov, Russkoe literaturnoe proiznosenie i udarenie (Moscow, 1960), p. 698: "Proiznosenie etix form s glasnym [u] v okoncanii -at (-jat), svojstvennoe russkomu literaturnomu jazyku v proslom, teper' uderzivaetsja po preimuscestvu v reci starsego pokolenija, a takze prinjato v sceniceskoj reci"; M. V. Panov, Russkaja fonetika (Moscow, 1967), p. 320: "V nastojascee vremja nado rekomendovat' proiznosenie /o[p'ät], /Mb'ät], fotv'ät] i pr., no staraja orfoepiceskaja norma ostaetsja dopustimoj."