Structure and stress in the phonology of Russian

This thesis investigates the interaction between phonology and morphology in the stress system of Russian. Russian has an accent-based stress system, in which morphemes are characterized by two accentual properties: [+accented, ±dominant]. Dominant morphemes trigger de-accentuation of the stem to which they attach. Words surface with one stress, regardless of whether they contain zero or several lexically accented morphemes. I show that the stress rule in Russian applies cyclically, assigning stress to the leftmost accented vowel, Words with accented roots have stress fixed on the root. In the inflectional paradigm of words with unaccented roots, stress alternates between the initial and final vowels, depending on the accentual property of the inflectional suffix. I refer to this as mobile stress. In Chapter One I observe an important correlation between stress and the derivational status of words. The generalization is the following