Thread: Hardness and softness

1) In Princeton is said about ид-у, идёшь -> идь-ошь and the change of quality in a consonant present in it : "Be happy to know that the change of hard consonant into soft produced, for example in this case, is completely general in the entire Russian verb system, all consonants capable of softening do so before endings beginning with {O}". I ask, putting apart cases like: irregular declensions of some pronouns (ты, теба), purely fictitious changes as consonant previously soft before an added soft consonant as well as particular behaviour of some consonants always soft/hard with every / some vowels and some other obvious case that I can't remember now; I ask, is present this change of quality of a consonant in other cases? Or it is only in present / future tense of verbs?
2) Is correct to say that in да(ва)ёшь, живёшь we are adding to the stems да(й)- and жив- two different endings: -йошь to the first verb and ь-ошь to the second? Since in да(й)ёшь й falls before any vowel or consonant because of its condition of a wimpy consonant. Thanks.

Originally Posted by radomir

1) In Princeton is said about ид-у, идёшь -> идь-ошь and the change of quality in a consonant present in it : "Be happy to know that the change of hard consonant into soft produced, for example in this case, is completely general in the entire Russian verb system, all consonants capable of softening do so before endings beginning with {O}". I ask, putting apart cases like: irregular declensions of some pronouns (ты, тебя), purely fictitious changes as consonant previously soft before an added soft consonant as well as particular behaviour of some consonants always soft/hard with every / some vowels and some other obvious case that I can't remember now; I ask, is present this change of quality of a consonant in other cases? Or it is only in present / future tense of verbs?
2) Is correct to say that in да(ва)ёшь, живёшь we are adding to the stems да(й)- and жив- two different endings: -йошь to the first verb and ь-ошь to the second? Since in да(й)ёшь й falls before any vowel or consonant because of its condition of a wimpy consonant. Thanks.

I don't really understand what you're asking..

1) Princeton says it is talking about the verb system, not nouns, pronouns etc.

With давать the stem is да- because the -ва- infix is fleeting (it simply disappears) so it is a vowel-stem and therefore is unrelated to this question.

The idea is that we are adding the ending -ошь but the preceding consonant mutates to its soft variant, thus жив- --> живь --+ oшь --> живёшь/

However this way of looking at the verbal system is very technical / clinical and not really helpful at this stage of learning and it's not worth bothering spending too much time worrying about it.

Tks; more simply my first question was:
1) The changes that Princeton says exist in verbal system is present elsewhere or on the rest of cases the quality of a consonant is kept everywhere "until the end"?
2) My second question is born from a misinterpretation of a somewhat ambiguous phrase in www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/verb.html finally made clear. Abt "The rules of Stem-Ending combination", where says: If the stem ends in a consonant and the ending begins with a vowel or v.v., there is no problem, both are kept. When two vowels are together, one of them, usually this of stem disappears. "Consonants are different, however; they are stronger than vowels and all but four of them put a fight. The weakings are й, в, н, м; like vowels they simply vanish from the stem in the presence of a vowel [like a vowel before another vowel, say I] on any ending." Well, but these consonants й, в, н, м disappear just before a consonant (дела[й]ть, жи[в]ть) not before a vowel (this was my mistake), so it is clear.
Thanks

Originally Posted by radomir

Tks; more simply my first question was:
1) The changes that Princeton says exist in verbal system is present elsewhere or on the rest of cases the quality of a consonant is kept everywhere "until the end"?
2) My second question is born from a misinterpretation of a somewhat ambiguous phrase in www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/verb.html finally made clear. Abt "The rules of Stem-Ending combination", where says: If the stem ends in a consonant and the ending begins with a vowel or v.v., there is no problem, both are kept. When two vowels are together, one of them, usually this of stem disappears. "Consonants are different, however; they are stronger than vowels and all but four of them put a fight. The weakings are й, в, н, м; like vowels they simply vanish from the stem in the presence of a vowel [like a vowel before another vowel, say I] on any ending." Well, but these consonants й, в, н, м disappear just before a consonant (дела[й]ть, жи[в]ть) not before a vowel (this was my mistake), so it is clear.
Thanks

The thing is, I am no expert, but there isn't a й In the stem of делать, e.g. vowel stem verbs.
The stem is дела-
When you add an ending, for example the Я form -у you can't have two hard vowels next to each other in Russian, a glide always forms between the two, like:

делау is not allowed in native Russian phonology/grammar. The second vowel always become iotated, e.g. делаю.

Спасибо.

The stem of the verb is almost always related to the imperative, so yes the stem of делать ends with a /j/.

Here's how we write it in morphophonemic transription:

d'

Thank you.

[quote=chaika]The stem of the verb is almost always related to the imperative, so yes the stem of делать ends with a /j/.

Here's how we write it in morphophonemic transription:

d'