The principles of Russian spelling are considered very complex, but against the background of comparison with other European languages, where there are a lot of traditional, conditional spellings, the spelling of the Russian language as a whole is quite logical, you just need to understand what it is based on.
This article describes the morphological principle of Russian spelling, examples of which are most words in our language.
What is morphology
Understanding what the morphological principle of Russian spelling is, examples of which are already given in the first grade of elementary school, is impossible without a concept of morphology as such. What is morphology? In what areas of knowledge is it customary to talk about it?
The application of the concept of morphology is much broader than the linguistic field, that is, the field of language learning. The easiest way to explain what it is, on the example of biology, where, in fact, this term came from. Morphology studies the structureorganism, its constituent parts and the role of each part in the life of the organism as a whole. For example, human internal morphology is anatomy.
Thus, morphology in the linguistic sense of the word studies the anatomy of the word, its structure, that is, what parts it consists of, why these parts can be distinguished and why they exist. The “components” of a person are the heart, liver, lungs; flower - petals, pistil, stamens; and words - prefix, root, suffix and ending. These are the "organs" of the word, which are in complex interaction with each other and perform their functions. The topic "Morfemics and word formation" at school is aimed specifically at studying these constituent parts of the word, the laws of their combination.
Preliminarily answering the question about the main principle of our spelling, we can say that we write down the constituent parts of the word (morphemes) as elements of writing, this is the morphological principle of Russian spelling. Examples (to begin with, the simplest ones): in the word “balls” we write I, as we write down, we transfer the root “ball” without changes, as we hear it in the word “ball”.
Are there other spelling principles?
To understand what the essence of the morphological principle of Russian spelling is, it must be considered against the background of other principles.
Let's clarify what spelling or spelling is. These are the rules that govern the writing of a particular language. It is far from always the basic principle that lies inbasis of these rules - morphological. In addition to it, first of all, we need to talk about phonetic and traditional principles.
Recording sounds
For example, you can write down a word as it is heard, that is, write down sounds. In this case, we would write the word "oak" like this: "dup". This principle of writing words (when nothing matters except the sound of the word and the transmission of this sound) is called phonetic. It is followed by children who have just learned to write: they write down what they hear and say. In this case, the uniformity of any prefix, root, suffix or ending may be violated.
Phonetic principle in Russian
There are not so many examples of phonetic spelling. It affects, first of all, the rules for writing the prefix (without- (bes-)). In those cases when we hear the sound C at its end (before voiceless consonants), we write down exactly this sound (carefree, uncompromising, unscrupulous), and in those cases when we hear Z (before voiced consonants and sonorants), we write it down (resigned, carefree, loafer).
Traditional principle
Another important principle is traditional, also called historical. It lies in the fact that a certain spelling of a word can only be explained by tradition, or habit. Once upon a time, the word was pronounced, and therefore, written in a certain way. Time has passed, the language has changed, its sound has changed, but according to tradition, the word still continues to be written that way. In Russian, this, for example, concerns the spelling of the well-known “zhi” and “shi”. Once upon a time in Russianlanguage, these combinations were pronounced “softly”, then this pronunciation was gone, but the writing tradition was preserved. Another example of traditional spelling is the loss of a word's association with its "test" words. This will be discussed below.
Cons of the traditional way of writing words
There are quite a lot of such "evidence" of the past in the Russian language, but if we compare, for example, with English, it will not seem the main one. In English, most spellings are explained precisely by tradition, since no reforms have been carried out in it for an extremely long time. That is why English-speaking students are forced not only to understand the rules for writing words, but to memorize the spellings themselves. Only tradition, for example, can explain why in the word "high" only the first two letters are "voiced", and the next two are written simply "out of habit", denoting zero sounds in the word.
Wide distribution of the traditional principle in Russian
As mentioned above, the spelling of the Russian language follows not only the morphological principle, but also the phonetic and traditional ones, from which it is quite difficult to get away completely. Most often we come across the traditional or historical principle of Russian spelling when we write down the so-called dictionary words. These are words that can only be explained historically. For example, why do we write "ink" with an E? Or "underwear" through E? The fact is that historically these words are associated with the names of colors - black and white, since at first the ink was only black, and linenonly white. Then the connection of these words with those from which they were formed was lost, but we continue to write them that way. There are also such words, the origin of which cannot be explained with the help of modern words at all, but their spelling is strictly regulated. For example: cow, dog. The same applies to foreign words: their spelling is regulated by the words of another language. These and similar words just need to be learned.
Another example is writing qi/ci. Only convention can explain why in the roots of words after C is written AND (with the exception of some surnames, for example, Antsyferov, and the words tsyts, chicks, chicken, gypsies), and in the endings - Y. After all, the syllables are pronounced in both cases in exactly the same way and are subject to no verification.
There is no obvious logic when writing words with traditional spelling, and, you see, they are much harder to learn than "checked" words. After all, it is always easier to remember what has an obvious explanation.
Why the morphological principle?
The role of the morphological principle in spelling can hardly be overestimated, because it regulates the laws of writing, makes it predictable, eliminates the need to memorize an infinite number of words in traditional writing and “guessing” spellings in phonetic writing. Indeed, in the final analysis, the correct recording of words is not a simple whim of linguists. This is what provides an easy understanding of the text, the ability to read any word "from a sheet." The children's spelling "weekend myzgrandmother hadili nyolka" makes reading the text difficult,slow. If we imagine that each time the words will be written differently, the reader will suffer from this, first of all, his speed of reading the text and the quality of his perception, since all efforts will be directed to “deciphering” the words.
Perhaps for a language that is less rich in word forms (that is, less rich in morphemes) and has less word-formation capabilities (word formation in Russian is very easy and free, according to a variety of models and using a variety of methods), this principle would be suitable, but not for the Russian. If we add to this a rich cultural discourse, that is, the complexity and subtlety of the thoughts that our language is designed to express, then a primitive phonetic notation is completely unacceptable.
The essence of the morphological principle of the Russian language. Examples
So, having considered the background of the existence of the morphological principle and having found out what morphology is, let's return to its essence. She is very simple. When we write down a word, we choose not sounds or words as elements of the record, but parts of words, its constituent elements (prefixes, roots, suffixes, postfixes and inflections). That is, when writing a word, we build it, as if from cubes, not from speech sounds, but from more complex, meaningful formations - morphemes. And “transfer”, write down each part of the word in an unchanged form. In the word "gymnastic" after N, we write A, as in the word "gymnast", since we write down a whole morpheme - the root "gymnast". In the word "clouds" we write the first letter O, as in the form "cloud",since we "transfer" the whole morpheme - the root "cloud". It cannot be destroyed, modified, because the morphological principle says: write down the whole morpheme, regardless of how it is heard and pronounced. In the word "cloud", in turn, we write the final O in the ending, as in the word "window" (this is the ending of the neuter noun in the nominative singular).
The problem of following the morphological principle in Russian writing
In Russian, the problem of writing according to the morphological principle is that we constantly fall into the traps of our pronunciation. Everything would be simple if all morphemes always sounded the same. However, in speech, everything happens completely differently, which is why children, following the phonetic principle, make so many mistakes.
The fact is that sounds in Russian speech are pronounced differently, depending on their position in the word.
Searching for a pattern of morphemes
For example, we never pronounce a voiced consonant at the end of words - it is always stunned. This is the articulation law of the Russian language. It's hard to imagine, but this is not the case in all languages. The English, on the other hand, are always surprised when Russians try to apply this law and pronounce the voiceless consonant at the end of, say, the English word "dog". In the "stunned" form - "doc" - the word is completely unrecognizable by them.
To find out which letter you needwrite at the end of the word "steamboat", we must pronounce the morpheme "hod" so as not to put it in a weak position of the absolute end of the word: "walk". From this example of the use of a morpheme, it can be seen that its standard ends in D.
Another example is vowel sounds. Without stress, we pronounce them “blurred”, they sound clearly only under stress. When choosing a letter, we also follow the morphological principle of Russian spelling. Examples: to write the word "walk", we must "check" the unstressed vowel - "passage". In this word, the vowel sound is clear, standard, which means that we write it down in a “weak” position - without stress. All these are spellings that obey the morphological principle of Russian spelling.
We also restore other standards of morphemes, and not only root ones, but also others (for example, we always write the prefix "NA" this way and nothing else). And it is the reference morpheme, according to the morphological principle of Russian spelling, that we write as an element when we write a word.
Thus, the morphological principle of Russian spelling presupposes knowledge about the structure of a word, its formation, part of speech, grammatical features (otherwise it will be impossible to restore the standards of suffixes and endings). For free and competent writing in Russian, it is necessary to have a rich vocabulary - then the search for "standards" of morphemes will take place quickly and automatically. People who read a lot write correctly, as a free orientation in the language makes it easy torecognize connections between words and their forms. It is in the course of reading that the understanding of the morphological principle of Russian spelling develops.
