Course Adviser: Ms Mirjam Zumstein
N.B. This page only introduces you to the paper.

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The earliest texts written in an East Slavonic language appear in Kievan Rus in the 11th century. These texts exhibit both Rusian Church Slavonic and native East Slavonic features. The Rusian Church Slavonic features in the texts represent a continuation of the sacral language that came into being in Macedonia and Moravia following the Cyrillo-Methodian mission in the 9th century. Over the course of many centuries both Church Slavonic and native East Slavonic varieties appear to have been in use, sometimes coexisting and sometimes mixing with each other. The breakthrough of a unified standard based on the East Slavonic variety took place in the 18th to 19th century. This is the beginning of the period of Contemporary Standard Russian.

The Syllabus

This paper consists of three main themes. First, we will analyse the sound structure (both the phonetic and phonemic structure) and grammatical structure (morphology) of Modern Russian and trace the development of this sound and grammatical structure over the past one thousand years. Second, we will explore the interaction of Church Slavonic and East Slavonic in a number of Early Rusian and Middle Russian texts, and, third, we will address the historical and socio-cultural factors that have played a role in the development of the Russian language. We shall focus on the language situation in Russia from the 11th to the 20th century.

The Examination

The paper is divided into two sections. All students must answer three questions. Part II students must answer one question from Section A (linguistic textual analysis) and two questions from Section B (the topics). In section A of the exam students have to translate one short unseen excerpt from Early Rusian. They also have to identify and comment on underlined forms in a number of seen and unseen excerpts.

The scheduled papers and the dissertation(s) may all relate to one language area or may be spread over different language areas. It is *always* advisable to take at least one scheduled paper with components in the same language as your language papers because the books that you read will feed into your language work, helping your fluency in reading and writing, and extending your vocabulary.

Teaching

Lectures and supervisions form an integrated package which will give you a thorough grounding in the subject and prepare you for the examination. This means that you cannot make a success of this course by concentrating just on supervisions: regular attendance at lectures is vital.

Students are strongly advised to take a look at an introductory textbook on linguistics and to read the chapters on phonetics, phonology, morpology and syntax.