Russian Historical Grammar (London East European) [Hardcover]

W. K. Matthews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2002 | ISBN-10: 0485175096 | ISBN-13: 978-0485175097 | Edition: 2nd annotated edition

The material which makes up the text of this book is arranged for convenience of reference in the three coherent parts, of which the last is essentially a supplement to the preceding two. Part I provides the requisite orientation for readers who may be new to linguistics, and its first two chapters should be useful to students of both Russian and other other Slavonic languages. The remainder of Part I is intended specifically for those studying Russian and constitutes, as it were, the prolegomena to Part II, which is entirely concerned with the evolution of the Russian phonological and grammatical system in its conventionally accepted domains and categories. Part II contains a series of appendices of which the first illustrates the evolutionary process with annotated excerpts from the historical records of the language covering a space of nine centuries; the main body of the work concludes with a short history of Russian historical grammar and a classified and annotated bibliography.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 378 pages
• Publisher: Athlone Pr; 2nd annotated edition edition (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0485175096
• ISBN-13: 978-0485175097
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,315,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A comprehensive handbook of Russian from a diachronic perspective, August 3, 2006

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Russian Historical Grammar (London East European) (Hardcover)

W.K. Matthews' RUSSIAN HISTORICAL GRAMMAR, like most volumes of the London East European Series, is a delightfully clear and superbly typeset handbook of diachronic linguistics. The Russian language has had a long and continuously attested evolution, and Matthews has painstakingly combed through the myriad historical sources to present a picture of how it came to its modern form.

The work is split into two parts. The first is a "linguistic prehistory". This takes the reader from Proto-Indo-European through Common Slavonic, with a historical account of major events such as the mission of Sts Cyril and Methodius and a list of sources, up to a description of the grammar and lexicon of Old Russian (= Proto-East-Slavonic). While Matthews tries to write for a general audience, some basic knowledge of comparative Indo-European linguistics and of Old Church Slavonic is recommended. For OCS, a superb guide is Nandris & Auty's two-volume HANDBOOK OF OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC.

The second part of the book is the historical study of the Russian language as most think of it, from the earliest specimens such as the Ostromir Gospels up to the first Soviet writers. As a student of Old Church Slavonic, it was fascinating to discover here how Old Russian abandoned the Common Slavonic verbal system, collapsing its many tenses into present and past, and developing a formal aspectual division. Of course, there is ample discussion of nominal morphology, phonological changes, and syntactic changes as well. The chapter devoted to lexical changes is substantial, listing terms from many subjects as they arise through loans or internal derivation until they are replaced by new terms.

Three appendixes follow the central material. The first is a collection of specimens of Russian prose from each period, the second is a history of the study of Russian historical grammar, and the third is a bibliography. The book closes with a Russian word index and a general index.

If you are interested in the historical study of the Slavonic languages, I heartily recommend finding a used copy of this RUSSIAN HISTORICAL GRAMMAR, and luckily it was reprinted several time and copies abound. Still, some knowledge of Russian, OCS, and the general theme of IE linguistics is necessary, too, so be sure to seek out resources for those.