Thread: Russian Syntax

I have tried to find documents in the Internet regarding Russian syntax. One impression is that you can place words wherever you want in a Russian sentence, as the order of the words has no real significance. What matters is each word's case, and the relationship these words have to each other. So, if you analyze a Russian sentence and relate them to the casuses you should be able to find out what the sentence expresses. Is this misunderstood, or what?

I would be grateful for your comments to this "observation" or "misunderstanding".

Word order is flexible, but that doesn't mean it's random. Pure statement-of-fact sentences tend to follow the same subject-verb-object order as English, but beyond that, it gets more complicated.

Very generally, in spoken Russian, 'new' information comes first, 'context' information at the end, wheras in formal written Russian, it's the other way around. It's not actually as contradictory as it sounds, however, the two styles are not employing different sets of rules, it's simply that some styles of sentence are more likely to be employed in written language than in spoken language, and vice versa.

Getting your word order wrong will probably not result in the listener failing to understand what you are saying, but it will at the very least sound unnatural.

It's a big subject though, and much has been written on it. You'd be better off Googling "russian word order" than "russian syntax".

syntax

You'd be better off Googling "russian word order" than "russian syntax".

Yes, because there are stupid guys like me, who have been speaking English all their lives, who don't know what this word means.

Originally Posted by DDT

syntax

[quote:105wzw5e]
You'd be better off Googling "russian word order" than "russian syntax".

Yes, because there are stupid guys like me, who have been speaking English all their lives, who don't know what this word means.[/quote:105wzw5e]
I haven't been speaking English all my life, frankly speaking, I almost never spoke it, but the meaning of this word is still very unclear for me.