Verbal Stress in West Russian Dialects

This thesis is dedicated to the verbal stress in West Russian dialects. The work is based on the data of the dialect corpora of Ilmen Lake District (Novgorod Oblast), Opochetsky District (Pskov Oblast), Nevelsky District (Pskov Oblast), Shetnevo and Makeevo (Zapadnodvinsky District, Tver Oblast), and Khislavichi District (Smolensk Oblast). The recordings from dialectological expeditions of V.V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences to the Gdovsky, Pskovsky, Izborsky, and Opochetsky districts of Pskov Oblast were also analyzed. Two features are considered: the accentuation of verbs with monosyllabic and disyllabic stems and bound roots in the past tense forms and verbs with -it' endings in the infinitives in the present tense forms. 3782 contexts were examined. Using statistical methods, we discovered that in the dialects located in the central and northern parts of Pskov Oblast, the stress in the past tense forms is predominantly based on the stem, while to the east and south the dependence of the stress on the original number of syllables in the verb stem is fully or partially preserved. In the present tense forms in all the dialects considered, the stress on the root predominates. In general, in West Russian dialects, there is a tendency towards stem (pre-inflectional) stress, which existed in the Old Russian period on the territory of the modern western dialect zone.