Russian Default Stress and the Effect of Lexically Weak Roots

Russian is known for its complicated and apparently arbitrary stress patterns, and few analyses of Russian stress have ever been provided. In this paper, I propose a novel analysis for stress placement in Russian verbs and nouns through the lens of Optimality Theory. Following Crosswhite et al. (2003) and Nikolaeva (1971), I propose that default stress in Russian is stem-final. Crucially, I attribute non-stem-final stress placement to a certain type of lexicality, called lexical weakness, in which a root repels stress