Ablaut and transitive softening in the Russian verb

Abstract

Transitive softening in Russian is a type of consonant mutation resulting from an underlying [CjV] cluster. There exist two closed classes of verbs where it occurs in the present tense in the absence of a clear source for a glide: five verbs with the thematic suffix ‑o‑, which can be illustrated by the verb kolótʲ ‘to stab’, and some 100 verbs with the thematic suffix ‑a‑, which can be illustrated by the verb pisátʲ ‘to write’. To explain how [o] and [a] end up as glides, I propose that the vowels in question change into their front counterparts as a result of the same process as that responsible for the stem ablaut in the verb molótʲ ‘to grind’ (1sg: melʲú). I argue that the hypothesis that ablaut can apply to thematic vowels as well as to stems makes it possible to account for another Russian verb exhibiting an unexpected behavior in the present tense (revétʲ ‘to bellow’). Since the latter part of the argument introduces ablauts involving more than one feature, the remainder of the paper is dedicated to the discussion of how multiple feature changes should be formalized.