Russian: A Linguistic Introduction by Paul s> Cubberley (review)

Abstract

Reviews Cubberley, Paul.Russian. A Linguistic Introduction. CambridgeUniversityPress, Cambridge and New York, 2002. xvi + 380 pp. Maps. Tables. Bibliography .Index. [5o.oo; [i8.95. THISoverview of Russian testifiesto Cubberley'simpressiveknowledgeof the language and its social setting and the chapters on phonology, inflectional morphology and word formation contain interesting data and observations. However, the book is disappointing. It lacks focus; in some chapters the presentationis inadequate;much of the content does not match the intended readership;and the space availablefordiscussionof Russianhas been severely reduced by having examples both in Cyrillic and in transliteration,and with glossesas well as idiomatic translations. The contents arethese:eleven pages on Russia,Russianand Russianwithin linguistics; forty-one pages on Russian as a Slavonic and Indo-European language, the development of standard Russian, and the history of its orthography; forty-nine pages on phonology; seventy-four pages on inflectional morphology which includes brief discussions of aspect, tense, voice, case, number and gender;seventy-eightpages on syntax;fifty-sevenpages on derivationalmorphology,with a shortsection on lexical itemsborrowedfrom other languagesand on differentregistersof lexical item and phrase;nineteen pages on dialects;and thirty-one pages on sociolinguisticscovering standard and non-standard usage, variation in pronunciation and morphology, and speech etiquette. The book is for students and teachers of Russian and for non-Russianists with a professional or amateur interest in linguistics or language studies. Cubberley assumesno professionalcompetence in linguisticsbut attemptsto 'elucidatetheoreticallinguisticapproachesto descriptionwith a minimum of specialist terminology' (p. 9). The trouble is that key terms such as 'aspect', 'complement' and 'logical subject' are not introduced and explained, nor archaictermssuch as 'Supine'(p. 42). Concepts such asAgent and otherroles are ignored and, for example, 'formal subject'is used where the more usual term is now 'grammaticalsubject'. Replete with technical termsand distinctivefeaturetheory, the chapter on phonology is impenetrable to readers without an excellent grounding in phonology. Readers recently instructed in phonology will not be helped by the fact that the featuresare fromJakobson and Halle's workin the fiftiesand have been partlysuperseded. The discussionof intonation (pp. 89-92) employsRussianlinguistictheory. This is fine in principle, but intonation cannot be explained in three pages with no diagrams. The discussion of stylisticvariation in Chapter 7 is brief and offersno examples or analysisof differenttext types. According to Chapter 6 rural dialects have their own phonological and grammaticalsystemsbut urban dialects are mere 'prostorecie',an unacceptably low level of language. Why? And what is the relationship between this 'prostorecie'and the hybrid dialect of Moscow mentioned on p. 3I4? Why is 526 SEER, 8i, 3, 2003 the stressedpluralsuffix-a referredto on p. 345 as a southerndialectalfeature (presumablynon-standard)while threelinesfurtheron thepluralforminzenera is labelled 'substandard'?'Substandard'is not used in WesternEuropean and North American sociolinguistics. There is no referenceto the huge amount of analysisof spontaneousspoken Russianby Zemskaja,Lapteva,Shmelev, Kitajgorodskajaand many others. The treatment of syntax is brief and uneven. For example, discussing examples 'Mne nuzna eta kniga', Cubberley states (p. 2I6) that 'In some impersonal constructions the logical object may appear in the Nominative, though one may argue that the Nominative is as much logical subject as object'. Nuizna is neither transitivenor a verb, the clause is active and knigais nominative. How could it be a logical object (Patient)?'Logical object' is undefined (pp. 215-I6), and the definition of 'logical subject' (p. i85) collapsesAgent with theme/topic. Middle voice (p. I96) is saidto be essentiallya morphologicalissue,but it is equally a valency issue and a discourse issue to do with how middle voice functionsin texts. What does it mean to saythatreflexiveverbsareone way of expressing the Passive (p. I97)? Cubberley neither explains nor defines 'PassiveVoice'. Crisp discussion of the genitive-accusativewith negated verbs requiresthe concept of reference to specific and non-specific entities and the distinction between singular and plural nouns and concrete and abstract nouns. Cubberley'saccount has none of these. Non-Russianists will profit more from relevant books in the LINCOM EUROPA series. Rich data and clear 'non-technical' syntactic analysis are offered in T. Wade's A Comprehensive RussianGrammar (Oxford, 200 I) or D. Offord's UsingRussian. A Guide toContemporagy Usage (Cambridge, I996). For information about on-going changes in Russian studentswill consult Ryazanova -Clarkeand Wade's TheRussian Language Today (London, I999). Three books in Englishhave...