On Some Changes in the Stress Norm of Modern Russian Adjectives

The present article is a study of the stress variation in adjectival forms in modern Russian from the normative point of view. The article represents the results of the sociolinguistic survey carried out on 143 Russian speakers in Moscow in 2000-2001. One of the purposes of this survey was to reveal usage of adjectival forms with unstable stress in contemporary Russian, and to examine how it correlates with the explicit norm indicated in the latest edition of the authoritative Orthoepic Dictionary (Orfoepiceskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, 1997). The article draws attention to the frequent non-coincidence between the codified norm and usage, to the unsatisfactory reflection of usage in this dictionary. Some proposals on changed codification in one third of the lexemes examined in the informant survey were put forward. The relationship between the different stages of variation among adjectival variants and the labels these variants are assigned in handbooks were ascertained. Some modifications in the system of chronological, normative and/or stylistic labels in normative dictionaries were proposed. The author points out that it is high time to break down the practice existing in the Russian linguistic tradition where the priority of the norm generally follows the traditional variant, in spite of the productivity and quantitative prevalence of some new forms.