proceeding: one stem or two? a review article

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Proceeding: One Stem or Two? A Review ArticleAuthor(s): Deborah A. GarretsonSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 338-346Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/306989 .

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PROCEEDING: ONE STEM OR TWO? A REVIEW ARTICLE

Deborah A. Garretson, Dartmouth College

Since its initial description by Roman Jakobson in 1948 in his article "Russian Conjugation"' the single-stem approach to the Russian verb2 has been adapted for use in the classroom and incorporated in several Russian language textbooks. The past few years in particular have seen not only the reissue of earlier, pioneering titles, now familiar to students and instructors alike, but also the appearance of several new texts based on the approach. Simultaneously, the debate over the pedagogical merits of the single-stem system has resurfaced in our journals.3

Alexander Lipson's A Russian Course, an imaginative and skillful adaptation of the single-stem for beginning-level study, and the first textbook to make use ofJakobson's formulation, was reissued by Slavica Press in its final edition in 1981.4 In the same year Charles Townsend's Continuing with Russian an intermediate-level text, was also reissued.5 Although not an integral part of the text, the single-stem system is also provided as supplementary material in Robert Baker's Mastering Rus- sian, a Workbook for use with Russian for Everybody, available in revised edition since 1976;6 the approach has been incorporated into the commentaries and glossary of the Soviet-American collaborative series, of which Stage One (by Bitextina, Davidson, et al.) appeared in its first edition in 1980.7

Of interest, too, are the recent series of textbooks by Richard Leed and Alice and Alexander Nakhimovsky: Beginning Russian, a first- year text, which came out in two volumes in 1981, and their third and fourth year text, Advanced Russian, available since 1980.8 Although neither of these texts employs single-stem, the advanced text draws on many of the insights of single-stem analysis in the section on word formation and deverbal nouns.9

In addition to the language texts mentioned above, there are now available two texts on the structure of the language with sections 338 SEEJ, Vol. 26, No. 3 (1982)



Proceeding: One Stem or Two? 339

devoted to the single-stem system of the verb: Townsend's influential Russian Word Formation, reissued by Slavica in 1980,10 and Maurice Levin's recent Russian Declension and Conjugation, a Structural Description with Exercises, which first appeared in 1978.11 Although I will not touch on the obvious advantages of the single-stem approach as a means of familiarizing the student with the basic principles of structural linguistics, these two texts deserve mention as indispensable references for the student of Russian and for graduate students in Slavic languages and literatures. The broader issue of the over-all role of linguistics in language teaching and language learning is beyond the scope of this review, and deserves further study.12

The debate over the pedagogical merits of the single-stem system of the verb, however, continues. Many of the objections initially raised against its use have already been countered, but it seems to me that the arguments in its favor have consistently encountered resistance largely because they raise questions about the over-all methodology and goals of the instruction of Russian. As Robert Channon so aptly summed it up in his article "The Single-Stem Verb System Revisited,"13 when single- stem was first introduced it was criticized as "unnecessary," "artificial," "too complex," and "too abstract." Students trained in the traditional manner, this argument maintains, are no less competent in their mastery of the verb than students trained in the single-stem approach,14 making the single-stem system "unnecessary."

It is now generally conceded, however, that in comparison to the traditional two-stem classification, the one-stem treatment is indeed a more economical description of the verb in Russian. What is contested, as Robin puts it, is its "learnability."15 The absence among teachers of argumentation on theoretical grounds against the classroom use of single-stem is noteworthy. It is indeed ironic, as Charles Townsend has pointed out in his review of Nils Thelin's work, that recent alternative one-stem hypotheses have not drawn on the rich Jakobsonian tradition "largely because these elaborations of Jakobson's idea have often devoted themselves to pedagogical purposes," and that "it seems foolish to disregard real advances and improvements in description because they also help students to learn a language."16

As far as theoretical advances are concerned, however, we must indeed look to critiques such as Elson's,17 which questions the genera- tive nature of verb stem alternants, rather than those of Thelin above, or ones which, like Swan's,18 simply offer variations on the traditional criticisms first voiced when the single-stem was initially formulated.

Present arguments against the usefulness of single-stem in the classroom, then, are of a different order: they no longer contest the theoretical basis of single-stem analysis, nor its economy of description;



340 Slavic and East European Journal

neither do they insist that the system is "artificial" in that it creates rules to make irregular verbs seem regular.19 The main objection of teachers, rather, is the complexity and abstractness of the system. At issue is not only the complexity of the classification and the rules of application, but also the "complex" stress notation of single stem. 20 Also at issue is the "abstractness' of the system in that it obliges the student to memorize forms which "do not exist"21 in the language. These issues are taken up below.

Single-stem analysis recognizes and makes predictable a far greater number of verbs than the two-stem system: it is thus not only more ambitious, it is also more successful. To argue that the number of rules to be memorized is greater or lesser with a given system is to avoid the issue. It is incontestable that to master the classification as well as the rules of combination of single-stem analysis is more demanding for the beginner, or even advanced, student than obtaining a general familiarization with the verb. It is, however, equally incontestable that the burden on the student's memory over the long term is enormous with the two-stem approach. In the two-stem approach the student is obliged to memorize, without the aid of a coherent frame of reference, an unending number of individual forms and stresses of verbs.

The pedagogical value of the single-stem analysis is thus a long- term one. Once the student has mastered the classification and rules of combination of the single-stem system, the student can predict all of the forms, including stress, of any new verb encountered. It is then a question of whether we, as pedagogues, are interested in the longterm con- sideration.

The issue of memorization is another matter. Memory work is an integral part of language learning, whether it is of units of vocabulary or of rules to implement these units. The question is, rather, whether the more substantial load of memorization is to be introduced at the beginning levels (with the inclusion of both rules and units) in the single-stem approach, in order to insure the mastery of the system and its full utilization as the student progresses, or, alternatively, of an initially lesser load of memorization (consisting solely of units) at the beginning level in the two-stem approach, only to leave an open-ended memory load for students as they continue their study of the language.

One should also mention in this regard the importance of drill. Like memory work, it is an integral part of language learning. Without memorization and constant drill, particularly during the first two years of study, a student cannot master the verb system in either approach.22 It has been my impression that most supporters of the single-stem system seriously underrate the importance of drill, not only in their work in the classroom, but also in their presentations in support of




single-stem analysis. Lipson's Russian Course is an exception to the rule. As a result, supporters of single-stem are vulnerable to the charge of critics that the single-stem system is too abstract and cannot be mastered effectively, since it hinders the automatic production of "cor- rect" forms. This argument usually centers on the single-stem student's inability to produce automatically the infinitive forms of verbs.

Most single-stem verb forms, however, are readily identifiable in relation to the infinitive form. Only the smaller group of unsuffixed verbs constitute an exception.23 I say this to stress the fact that not only is abstractness a relative matter, but also that drill is no less essential to the "abstract" one-stem system of instruction than it is to the two-stem system of instruction.

It should be pointed out, for that matter, that complexity, too, is relative. Robin clearly formulates the argument of two-stem advocates:

.. it is not only the length of explanation which determines (a rule's) learnability. If a rule is so compact and metalinguistically stated that it is hard to comprehend at a glance, its learnability is lessened.24

Yet we expect our students in their mathematics and science courses to master and implement rules and formulae far more complex than those of the single-stem analysis of the Russian verb. We are simply not accustomed to abstractness nor even complexity in the study of language which we think of, and rightly so, as a practical and concrete skill. Yet we are neither puzzled by, nor suspicious of, abstractness and complexity in other fields of instruction, no less concrete nor practical in their application.

Mastery of single-stem is not beyond the reach of our students. It requires, like anything else, a carefully and sensibly paced presentation in the course of first-year instruction, as in Lipson's text, with the progressive mastery of the stem types, rules of combination and their exceptions, as well as faultless command of all forms of head-verbs.25

Abstractness and complexity may still remain to some, perhaps to many, serious obstacles to the classroom use of the single-stem verb. Others consider them an obstacle only for the beginning student and have urged the use of single-stem "in advanced courses in grammar, or, preferably, in linguistic structure," since "Such a system is the more readily comprehensible, the greater the knowledge of Russian."26

Yet the real benefits of the single-stem system lie in its long-term usefulness. Introducing single-stem to the student at the advanced level, whether in a language or structure course, is too late. Its pedagogical usefulness for language study then is limited, for by that time the students have already worked out an ad hoc system of their own devising on the basis of the traditional presentation. They inevitably fall back on




this and on the old familiar habits we ourselves have taught them, often even reinterpreting the single-stem analysis in terms of the two-stem. We shouldn't be surprised then to find them questioning the advantages of spending a half year mastering the closed system of single-stem analysis at this stage of their studies, when the areas most in need of advancement are those of acquiring a more sophisticated vocabulary, and more sophisticated conversational, writing, and reading skills. To introduce single-stem at this level is to rob it of its greatest advantage.

To be of use to the students, to be a natural and habitual point of orientation to them, the single-stem approach must be introduced early and thereafter consistently applied and constantly expanded over the students' full term of language study. Its advantage is that, when the floodgates open to more sophisticated language demands, the students have available the skills to identify and absorb whole chunks of new material-familiar roots newly combined with prefixes, new verb roots with and without prefixes, all in perfective and imperfective form, new related verbal nouns and related adjectival formations. The psychologi- cal advantage is enormous, since the students no longer feel themselves confronted with a mass of new material with arbitrary rules of formation. What would otherwise be a tangle of forms and capricious stresses is now predictable.

Levin has pointed out, for instance, that the distribution of past passive participial suffixes is one of the least orderly items in any of the traditional systems of conjugation.27 In the single-stem approach, however, their formation is not only incomparably simplified, it is also fully predictable.28 Similarly, the advantage of stress prediction of all forms of the verb, especially in such past passive participial forms, in the single-stem treatment, provides an even greater contrast to the traditional approach. Not only is the system of verbal stress simplified, it is actually fully codified. The stress generalizations provided for the different stem types and for their individual forms are an invaluable predictive tool for the students. Mastery is once again but a question of explanatory presentation and thorough drill accompanying each verbal category as it is covered.

The derivation of imperfective aspectual pairs in the single-stem approach also proves far simpler for the student to master. Once the classification and rules of combination have been mastered, two or three additional rules will give the students a firm grasp of imperfective forms,29 as well as of such deverbal derivations as abstract nouns in ij-e and agent nouns in -tel'-#.30

The single-stem approach with its division of verbs into natural classes on the basis of their common formal properties is able not only to account for the full body of data, but also to provide the student with




enormous predictive powers. If we are indeed concerned with the preparation, over an approx-

imately two-year period, of students with a beginning to intermediate level of proficiency in Russian, then the choice is not so critical. The traditional approach actually has an advantage in being more broadly known and used, and in providing a greater choice of textbooks and materials. If, however, we are seriously building for the future and are interested in giving the students the tools to develop their language skills to a more advanced, and beyond that, a truly sophisticated level,31 then the single-stem approach is invaluable.

Many consider the long-term preparation of our students a luxury. The state of foreign language instruction is such that we can barely support the short-term endeavor. It is assumed that a student can gain some kind of proficiency in a foreign language in one or two years' study, depending on the degree of difficulty of the language.32 Obviously one year of foreign language study is better than none at all, but what kind of proficiency can we possibly achieve in such a limited period of time in any language, and particularly in Russian? Students completing such a program can consider themselves fortunate indeed if they retain even as much as one half of what they learned in the classroom, even with some exposure to the language after the completion of their formal studies. These students, however, are not equipped even to contemplate the "breakthrough" in speech and comprehension so anxiously anticipated by the intermediate or advanced student of foreign language.

Can we really gear our whole programs to those who are fulfilling their language requirements, or are interested in minimal reading or tourist skills? As it is we are concerned even about the proficiency of those Russian students who complete advanced level study.

The single-stem approach goes a long way in enabling the students to gain proficiency in a way that saves them more time and is far less intimidating to them psychologically. In addition, a knowledge of the structure of the verb, of consonant mutations and patterns of stress, in short, of the principles of word-formation in Russian, are invaluable tools for a more accelerated and solid mastery at the advanced level of a broad and rich vocabulary, an area long considered the chief obstacle to proficiency in foreign language, and especially in Russian.33

The mastery of verbal formations is greatly simplified and accelerated, and the study of individual prefixes and of their range of meanings and variant forms not only increases the students' inventory of verbal roots, but also increases their deverbal nominal and adjectival vocabulary ten-fold. The study of verbal suffixation, of factitive and "becoming" verbs, similarly provides a rich and varied vocabulary, not only of verbal forms, but, again, of their related nominal and adjectival deriva-




tions. The skills acquired by the students through such study then need only be extended to other areas of word-formation, to work with nominal and adjectival roots and to their derivations.

With its sound linguistic approach the single-stem analysis is thus of inestimable value in building students' vocabulary more rapidly and on a surer basis. This is not only vital in its own right, it is also indispensable to the advancement of their other skills. It is, after all, difficult to read, write, and speak effectively without a large and varied vocabulary.

The pedagogical value of the single-stem system is of a specific and lasting nature: it supplies the students with effective and economical tools for continued language study. It seems reasonable to urge those of our Russian and Slavic departments which offer majors to take a closer look at the advantages of single-stem instruction. Those departments which provide shorter-term programs should also consider such alternative, for single-stem instruction does not have to detract from the development of those basic skills that are of interest to students in such programs, as witnessed by Lipson's text, and has the added advantage of simultaneously equipping them to continue their study on an indepen- dent basis or through further formal study.

It is up to us, as teachers of the language, to agree on our goals in our respective colleges. It is also up to us to reach this agreement on a departmental level and to apply it consistently at all levels of instruction. It seems to me that a lack of concurrence on the single-stem approach usually results less from the presumed "difficulties" of the system than from the fact that the majority of Russian language teachers in the country, mainly Russian literature specialists and also emigres, are not fully conversant with single-stem and are thus less able to appreciate its advantages.

In order to consider instruction based on single-stem as an option we have to seriously consider the implications of our language programs as they are presently structured. We need sober assessment of what can be done in the time available and how best to make use of that time. We need to determine what multiple goals we are setting for our students and for ourselves. If we are really serious about long-term language training and about providing our students with the opportunity for developing true proficiency, then we should be proceeding with the change. Let us then proceed.




NOTES

1 Roman Jakobson, "Russian Conjugation," Word 4 (1948), 155-67. 2 The traditional approach describes the verb in terms of two stems to which one adds

the personal endings of the verb. The single-stem approach, on the other hand, regards the single-stem as the composite of all the information needed to conjugate a verb. The rules of combination provide the means of deriving these forms by specify- ing the changes which take place when verbal endings are added to the basic stem. Traditional 2iv- present stem 2i- infinitive stem Single stem 2iv- basic stem rule: the addition of likes (of a consonant ending to a stem ending in a consonant, or of

a vowel ending to a stem ending in a vowel) results in the loss, or "truncation" of the first element.

2iv + t' S+ t' -* 2it'

rule: the addition of unlikes results in the simple addition of the verbal ending to the basic stem.

2iv + u - 2ivu Additional rules specify other changes, for instance, mutations: Traditional pis- present stem pisa- infinitive stem Single stem pisa- basic stem rule: -a- suffixed verbs mutate before vocalic endings pist + u pisu but: pisa + t' pisat' (simple addition)

3 Gilbert H. Holiday, "Some Observations on the Teaching of One-Stem Verb Systems," SEEJ 25, no. 1 (1981), 90-94.

4 Alexander Lipson, A Russian Course (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1981). 5 Charles E. Townsend, Continuing with Russian (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1981). 6 Robert Baker, Mastering Russian, A Workbook for use with Russian for Everybody

(Laconia, N.H.: Andre Paquette, 1976). 7 G. Bitekhtina, D. Davidson, T. Dorofeyeva, and N. Fedyanina, Russian, Stage One

(Moscow: Russian Language Publishers, 1980). 8 Richard L. Leed, Alexander D. Nakhimovsky and Alice S. Nakhimovsky, Beginning

Russian, Vols. I and II (Columus, Ohio: Slavica, 1981). Alexander D. Nakhimovsky and Richard L. Leed, Advanced Russian (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1980). A second- year text. Intermediate Russian, is planned for publication in 1982.

9 Nakhimovsky and Leed (1980), 312-18. 10 Charles E. Townsend, Russian Word Formation (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1980). 11 Maurice I. Levin, Russian Declension and Conjugation: A Structural Description

with Exercises (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1978). 12 See, for instance, Catherine Chvany, "Proceed with Caution," in Soviet-American

Russian Language Contributions, Richard D. Brecht and Dan E. Davidson, eds. (Urbana, Illinois: G and G Press, 1977), 58-65. The title of the article and the subsequent reference to it by Robert Channon ("Proceed with caution, but proceed.") in the closing lines of his article "The Single-Stem System Revisited," also in Brecht and Davidson (1977), 112-22, have inspired the title of this review.

13 In Brecht and Davidson (1977), 113. 14 Richard Robin, review of Brecht and Davidson (1977) above, in RLJ 22, no. 111

(1978), 198. 15 Robin (1978), 199.




16 Charles E. Townsend, Review of Nils B. Thelin, Notes on General and Russian Morphology (Uppsala: Studia Slavica Upsaliensia, 15, 1975) and Towards a Theory of Verb Stem Formation and Conjugation in Modern Russian (Uppsala: Studia Slavica Upsaliensia, 17, 1975) in RLJ 31, no. 109 (1977), 197-202.

17 Mark J. Elson, "On the Relationship among Stem Alternants in Slavic Verbal Systems," Wiener Slavistischer Almanach 5 (1980), 175-86.

18 Oscar Swan, "Predicting the Present Tense from the Infinitve," RLJ 112 (1978), 19 As mentioned by Channon (1977), 118. 20 Holiday (1981), 92. 21 See, for instance, Howard I. Aronson, "Order of Presentation of Grammatical Struc-

tures in the Teaching of Russian," SEEJ 10, no. 2 (1966), 181-90. 22 Holiday (1981) justly points out the importance of memorization in both systems, but

makes no mention of drill work. 23 Suffixed stems, like tit-aj+ and pis-a+, for instance, are readily recognizable in

relation to the infintive form. Unsuffixed verbs, however, are much less so: ?iv+, moj+, and particularly non-syllabic resonants like 2/m +.

24 Robin (1978), 199. 25 I refer here to the kind of presentation of stem types provided by Townsend (1980),

86-87 and (1981), 30-31, in which high frequency verbs are selected as a model for each stem type.

26 Holiday (1981), 94. 27 Maurice I. Levin, "On Presenting the Russian Verb," SEEJ 13, no. 2 (1969), 236-37. 28 See Levin (1969), 237 for a comparison of single-stem and two-stem treatments of past

passive participial forms and their stresses. Levin (1978), 115-17 contains the most complete single-stem treatment of past passive participial constructions.

29 See Levin (1978), 238-39 for a complete treatment of imperfective derivation. 30 See Townsend (1980), 152-66 for a treatment of abstract deverbal noun formations,

and pages 171 and 187 for formations in -tel'-#. Such material can be used with a great degree of success at the advanced level of langauge study, as in Nakhimovsky and Leed (1980), 312-18.

31 A discussion of postclassroom factors in language learning are beyond the scope of this review. Their importance has yet to be fully recognized by researchers in foreign language acquisition. For interesting discussion see Eugene E. Nida, "Sociopsycho- logical Problems in Language Mastery and Retention," in The Psychology of Second Language Learning, Paul Pimsleur and Terence Quinn, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971), 59-65.

32 Such programs are helpful for the student interested in gaining a cursory reading knowledge of a language or for the student interested in acquiring the minimal conversational means to get around in a foreign country, but we cannot expect these programs to accomplish any more than that.

33 See, for instance, Howard I. Aronson, "On Teaching Russian Vocabulary and the State of the Discipline," SEEJ 14, no. 4 (1970), 475-83; and Claire Walker, "Russian Teaching: It Doesn't Have to End Badly," SEEJ 10, no. 3 (1966), 316-26.



proceeding: one stem or two? a review article

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