{"id":1800,"date":"2011-10-03T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T08:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1800"},"modified":"2011-09-19T09:33:28","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T07:33:28","slug":"a-comprehensive-russian-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1800","title":{"rendered":"A comprehensive Russian grammar"},"content":{"rendered":"
A comprehensive Russian grammar<\/strong>. 3rd edn. By Terence Wade<\/strong>. (Revised and updated by David Gillespie.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Pp. xxxiv, 596. ISBN 9781405136396<\/a>. $49.95.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Elly van Gelderen<\/a><\/strong>, Arizona State University<\/em><\/p>\n

The first edition of A comprehensive Russian grammar<\/em> (CRG) by Terence Wade dates from 1992; David Gillespie\u2019s 2010 revisions in the current edition have kept the contents of the grammar largely as they were in the first edition but have expanded \u2018the sources and reference materials used\u2019 (xxix). The book is one of the Blackwell reference grammars and is intended for intermediate students of Russian, not for readers with little or no knowledge of Russian. The grammar includes very minimal linguistic terminology, which again may be useful to English-speaking learners of Russian but is not as efficient for other users. I will offer a few comments on the book\u2019s <\/em>descriptions of null subjects, negatives, and the particle zhe<\/em>, from the point of view of a linguist using this grammar; many of my comments apply also to other topics.<\/p>\n

The linguistic literature on Slavic discusses pro-drop, or null subjects at length, but the CRG treats null subjects in a footnote (136-37) of ten lines. \u2018\u042f [`I\u2019] is often omitted in everyday speech…and in official applications and announcements….In spoken Russian, pronouns in general are often omitted, since present and future verb forms alone are sufficient to express person and number\u2019. It would be interesting to know if first-person pronouns are omitted most often, as well as answers to a number of other questions; nevertheless, the CRG provides information that is relevant to learning Russian grammar.<\/p>\n

Negatives in Slavic are again a frequent topic of linguistic investigation, but one has to look for a treatment throughout the grammar. For instance, in one part of the book we learn about the genitive and accusative after negated verbs, where the reader is required to know the case endings to understand the examples (112), and later in the book, we find examples of the negative particle \u043d\u0435<\/em> with the negative pronouns (157-61), but these examples are not systematically distributed. For example, many have the negative pronoun in preverbal position.<\/p>\n

The use of the particle \u0436\u0435<\/em> zhe<\/em> is introduced in a few places in the book. It is mentioned briefly in a note (154), and then later in the book it is said that the particle follows the word it qualifies and \u2018introduces a more categorical emphasis\u2019 (506-07). Additionally, there is included a helpful section with six ways in which the particle is used (513\u201314). There is no mention, however, of whether it is ever obligatory or of what kind of grammatical category it may be.<\/p>\n

Despite some shortcomings that may be noted by readers with a linguistic background, the CRG is a great resource on Russian. For instance, the declension chart (73) is among the most insightful I have seen, and looking up topics is made very easy. There are nineteen pages of table of contents, seventeen pages indexing English concepts and thirty-one pages of Russian words. In sum, I consider this book to be a useful grammar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A comprehensive Russian grammar. 3rd edn. By Terence Wade. (Revised and updated by David Gillespie.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Pp. xxxiv, 596. ISBN 9781405136396. $49.95. Reviewed by Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University The first edition of A comprehensive Russian grammar (CRG) by Terence Wade dates from 1992; David Gillespie\u2019s 2010 revisions in the current edition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1801,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions\/1801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}