Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
East Slavic language with approx. 150 million speakers, spoken in Russia and many of the former Soviet republics. On the basis of (South Slavic) Old Church Slavic and spoken East Slavic, an Old Russian literary language developed that was used until well into the seventeenth century. But the existence of hundreds of birch bark letters found in Novgorod suggests that there may also have been a literary tradition less tied to the church and Old Church Slavic. The most important literary document is the Slovo o polku Igorevě, the ‘Lay of Igor’s Campaign’ (1185). The eighteenth century saw the development of modern Russian, in part due to the activities of Peter the Great (1672–1725), whose greatest contribution to the language was the reform of the Cyrillic alphabet through the introduction of the graždánskaja ázbuka (‘people’s alphabet’). The last extensive spelling reform occurred in 1917 (including loss of redundant ‹ъ› in word-final position, and the loss of 
, >
, and 
in all positions.
Characteristics: free word stress, reduction of unstressed vowels, distinction of palatalized vs unpalatalized consonants, verbal categories of number and gender distinguished in the past tense; numerous impersonal constructions; remnants of Old Church Slavic in the lexicon: e.g. grad ‘city’ in Leningrad vs East Slavic gorod ‘city’ in Novgorod.
General
Comrie, B. 1996. The Russian language in the twentieth century. Oxford.
Hamilton, W.S. 1980. Introduction to Russian phonology and word order. Columbus, OH.
Isačenko, A.V. 1980–3. Geschichte der russischen Sprache, 2 vols. Heidelberg.
——1962. Die russische Sprache der Gegenwart, part 1: Formenlehre. Halle. (3rd edn 1975.)
Halle, M. 1959. The sound pattern of Russian. ’s-Gravenhage.
Jones, D. and D.Ward. 1969. The phonetics of Russian. Cambridge.
Grammars
Garde, P. 1980. Grammaire russe. Paris.
Švedova, N.J. et al. (eds) 1980. Russkaja grammatika, 2 vols. Moscow.
Wade, T. 1992. A comprehensive Russian grammar. Oxford.
Historical grammars
Borkovskij, V.I. and P.S.Kuznecov. 1965. Istor-ičeskaja grammatika russkogo jazyka, 2nd edn. Moscow.
Kiparsky, V.
1963–75. Russische historische Grammatik, 3 vols. Heidelberg.
History and dialects
Avanesov, R.I. and S.V.Bromlej. 1986- . Dialektologičeskij atlas russkogo jazyka, Vol. 2 1989. Moscow.
Avanesov, R.I. and V.G.Orlova (eds) 1965. Russkaja dialektologija, 2nd edn. Moscow.
Comrie, B. and G.Stone. 1978. The Russian language since the revolution. Oxford.
Vinokur, G.O. 1971. The Russian language: a brief history. Cambridge.
Dictionaries
Harrison, W. and S.le Fleming. 1981. Russian dictionary. London.
Slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka. 1950–65. 17 vols. Moscow.
Zaliznjak, A.A. 1977. Grammatičeskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka. Moscow.
Etymological dictionaries
Preobraženskij, A.G. 1951. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. New York.
Šanskij, N.M. 1963–82. Etimologičeskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka, 8 vols. Moscow.
Vasmer, M. 1953–8. Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg. (Russ. trans. and annotation by O.N.Trubačev. Moscow 1964–73.)
Journals
Russian Language Journal.
Russian Linguistics.
Russistik
Slavic
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