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[229]D htcnjhfyxbr djitk xtkjdtr b ctk hzljv c {fhbyunjyjv. -- Ghbdtn! -- dphtdtk xtkjdtr. Gjnjv jy pfvtnbk {fhbyunjyf<j> b iktgyek tuj<j> gj cgbyt.

Into the restaurant came a man and sat next to Harrington. -- Greetings! -- the man roared. Then he noticed Harrington and slapped him on the back.

[230]Jy dsnfobk bp rfhvfyf ldt cnjgrb ltytu<j> b iktgyek b[<j> yf cnjk gthtl Ktjybljv.

He took out two stacks of money and slapped them down on the table in front of Leonid.

4.5.5 Second-person pronouns and address

Russian, like French, uses second-person plural forms of the pronoun and of the present tense of verbs -- what may be written as the “B-form” -- both for true plurals and for formal address to a single person.53 The second-person singular forms of the pronoun (ns, etc.) and of verbs -- what may be written as the “-form” -- are then not only singular but also informal. To an extent the use of address has to be understood as part of a dyad involving two speakers: reciprocal ↔ is mutually recognized familiarity and solidarity; B↔B implies mutual formality, distance, and mutual acknowledgment of autonomy; the mixed dyad ↔B indicates an asymmetry in age or social status.54

For a given pair of individuals, the use of pronouns and (less so) forms of names is stable in different speech contexts, though certain kinds of ad hoc changes do occur. Speakers who use mutual privately may switch to B when others are present in a professional setting.55 It has been reported that speakers can spontaneously, in annoyance, switch to in place of B, or, alternatively, that speakers can switch away from to a more detached B, indicating the breakdown of cordial, familiar relations.

As a rule, once two individuals have adopted one pattern of address, they can be expected to maintain the pattern throughout their lives. The exception is the ritual transition from B to that marks the emergence of brotherhood or romance:

53The cultural rules for the use of the two forms of pronouns and verbs, and of names in address, are, like many linguistic and cultural rules, internalized by speakers of Russian but little described for outsiders. Kantorovich (1966) inserts personal observations and textual attestations in an impassioned argument against asymmetric ↔B. Friedrich (1966, 1972) lists ten parameters that influence usage and documents usage in nineteenth-century belles-lettres, which he takes to reflect actual usage, with special attention to instances of shifts (“breakthroughs”) between

and B. The examples of instability should probably be interpreted as literary maneuvers. For instance, the wild swings in pronoun usage between and B observed between the prince and a seduced-and-abandoned maiden (eventually prostitute) in Tolstoy’s Resurrection has to be understood as part of Tolstoy’s attempt to portray the complex power and moral relations between the two characters. Nakhimovsky 1976 and Alexeev 2000 offer extensive observations about patterns of usage across various ages and social groups. Comrie, Stone, and Polinsky 1996 adds some additional observations.

54 Brown and Gilman 1960.

228A Reference Grammar of Russian

[231]Jlby bp yb[ -- Dfkthbq Gthwjd -- ujdjhbn lheujve:

--Lfdfqnt ,eltv c dfvb yf ns.

--Lfdfq, -- ujdjhbn lheujq. эnbv lheubv /yjitq ,sk z. One of them -- Valery Pertsov -- says to the other:

--Let’s switch to ty.

--Let’s, -- says the other. I was that second youth.

Aside from this codified rite of transition, speakers otherwise tend to maintain the pattern they establish, from the time in the life cycle when they establish their relations. Childhood or adolescent friends who have grown up with continue to use throughout their lives. Thus “to switch from ns to ds when a relationship has reached a certain degree of intimacy is impossible, in fact insulting.”56

Actual usage depends on the social class of the interlocutors, their institutional rank and allegiance, age, and how people perceive these variables.

Children grow up being addressed with and using to address family members and peers. Children learn to address adult family friends with B, with a quasi-kinship title like lzlz (Njkz), ntnz (Ktyf), and eventually to use B with adult outsiders (teachers, etc.).

The usage among adolescents and young adults is transitional. It was reported a quarter of a century ago that adolescents begin to be addressed with B by teachers and other adults from (approximately) the age of sixteen, and since they already address their teachers (and other authority figures) with B, they would, accordingly, enter into dyads of reciprocal B↔B.57 For young people amongst themselves, reciprocal ↔ seems to be usual now when they presume they belong to the same social sphere -- educational or professional or social circles. However, a new acquaintance between members of the opposite sexes in late adolescence used to begin with B if they did not presume a shared in-group.

Middle-aged adults of comparable status who have no prior relationship are likely to initiate reciprocal B↔B. The reciprocal pattern is that favored in academic institutions between persons of different ages (excepting younger colleagues who think of themselves as peers and use reciprocal ↔). Some asymmetry in the relations is inevitably introduced by the name forms that are used in the dyad ↔B. In particular, a senior person can use the first name (= И ) or the surname (= ) while the junior person uses first name and patronymic (=И J). Reciprocal B↔B among comparable adults (of comparable status and

56 Nakhimovsky 1976:117, n. 4, a source unusual in making explicit the etiology of address -- the fact that speakers establish a pattern of address at some point and thereafter maintain that pattern.

57 Transition to address with B may not be universal (Comrie, Stone, and Polinsky 1996:252).

Arguments 229

age, with no long-term history) has evidently been losing ground to reciprocal

↔.

Asymmetric usage (↔B) makes explicit an asymmetry in power relations in an institutional setting -- in the army, in factories -- but it is possible that asymmetric ↔B has lost ground to B↔B and ↔ over the last quarter century.58 Overall, the development until 1989--91 was in the direction of increasing use of the two reciprocal patterns. B↔B evidently expanded across the institutional spectrum, from the most genteel context of academia to other institutions. ↔ expanded up the age ladder, at the expense of the asymmetric pattern ↔B and the formal pattern of B↔B. It remains to be seen what patterns of usage will emerge -- in particular, whether the asymmetric pattern

↔B will make a comeback in the culture of the New Russians, where power and status are so vexed.

4.5.6 Names

Names are various, and various combinations are possible.59 Usage differs depending on whether the name is used to address someone or to refer to someone. Usage differs by genre or function of text. Even in speech, narrative is different from immediate conversation. Official bureaucratic style has its own patterns (in writing and, derivatively, in speech). Memoirs have a distinct style, one that vacillates between familiarity and detachment. Reference is made below to one uninspired, Soviet-era text, a set of short reminiscences by forty writers and family members about the jingoistic poet Alexander Andreevich Prokofev.60 The text, while formulaic, offers some evidence about the variation that is possible in the use of names to refer to the same individual in a written text.

Russian names have maximally three parts: the formal given name (bvz, hereafter, “И ”), such as Fktrctq; the patronymic (jnxtcndj, hereafter “J”), such as male Fktrcttdbx, female Fktrcttdyf; and the surname (or family name, afvbkbz, hereafter “”), such as male Fktrcttd, female Fktrcttdf. In place of the formal first names, diminutives (evtymibntkmyfz ajhvf, hereafter, “У ”), such as Fktif, are often used.

Given name/bvz (И or У ): In a d d r e s s , someone who is addressed with the informal pronoun is as a rule also addressed by the given name, and in fact by a diminutive form rather than the full form of the given name. The forms of У are legion. For example, the formal name Fktrctq ‘Aleksei’ gives Fkt[f,

Fktif, Kt[f, Ktyf, Fktitymrf, Fkt[fy, Ktrcf, Ktrctq, Ktrctqrf; similarly,

58 Comrie, Stone, and Polinsky 1996:255.

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speaker invites the addressee to think of the person as someone who might be addressed. We do not know Pushkin, but we can discuss him as a person who might be addressed:

[235]Geirbycrb[ cjcty e;t ytn djpkt ctkf Vb[fqkjdcrjuj, rfr ytn b cfvjuj

Fktrcfylhf Cthuttdbxf, tuj ltntq . . .

The Pushkinian pines are no longer at Mikhailovskoe, just as there is no Aleksandr Sergeevich himself, nor his children . . .

A person who could be addressed is a private individual, one with unique habits or qualities that the speaker (or the reader) could observe (as in [236]). These private, personal properties are opposed to the public and professional properties of the individual:

[236]Vs ;bkb d Ljvt ndjhxtcndf d Rjvfhjdt. Cnjzkf [jkjlyfz pbvf. Ghjrjamtd d nt lyb gtht;bdfk nhfubxtcre/ rjyxbye csyf Cfyb -- yfituj, njulf tot vjkjls[ gbcfntktq, njdfhbof -- lfhjdbnjuj gjэnf b gthtdjlxbrf. Nt, rnj yf[jlbkcz hzljv c Fktrcfylhjv Fylhttdbxtv, cnfhfkbcm jndktxm tuj . . .

We were living in the Dom Tvorchestva in Komarovo. It was a cold winter. Prokofev in those days was trying to get over the tragic death of his son Sania -- a comrade of us writers, who were still young then -- a talented poet and translator. Whoever was around Aleksandr Andreevich tried to distract him . . .

The first reference by means of presents a journalistic fact, after which the perspective shifts to discuss how this individual, now ИJ, interacted with others as a private person.

The patronymic J is used occasionally by itself in peasants’ or workers’ speech, addressed to avuncular figures,62 a famous example being yfi Bkmbx ‘our beloved Ilich [Lenin]’, or among the intelligentsia as a teasing parody of that type of usage.

Surname/afvbkbz (Ф): The surname can be used by itself or in combination with the given name И or ИJ. The combined forms ИJ or И would ordinarily not be used in address, except in bureaucratic contexts (for example, reading a list of names). can be used by itself in address with . This pattern can signal: a remnant of schooldays, solidarity within some profession or status group (when is reciprocal), or condescension from a superior to an inferior (when the address dyad is asymmetric ↔B).

62 Nakhimovsky 1976:95. A no less famous example from an earlier time: ≤ljkuj kb verb ctz, ghjnjgjg, ,eltn?≥ B z ujdjh/: ≤Vfhrjdyf, lj cfvsz cvthnb!≥ Jyf ;t, dplj[yz, jndtofkf:

≤lj,hj, Gtnhjdbxm, byj tot gj,htltv≥ “Will these torments last long, oh protopope?” And I say, “Markovna, until death.” And she, sighing, answered, “Well, Petrovich, let us wander a bit more”.’

232 A Reference Grammar of Russian

In reference, is used in an anaphoric fashion to refer to a known individual in the middle of an episode, once the identity of the individual and some properties of the individual are established ([236], [237] below).

The combination of all three names ИJ (for example, Fktrcfylh Fylhttdbx Ghjrjamtd) provides a complete identification of an individual, potentially with all properties relevant, with overtones of grandeur, to initiate or finish off the discussion of an individual. Using initials (F. F. Ghjrjamtd) is more bureaucratic than the explicit ИJ.

The combination of И (without the jnxtcndj) is used especially for public figures (actors, writers, etc.). It invites one to think of the public as opposed to the private individual -- for example, to introduce individuals for a public performance ([237]):

[237]Dcktl pf Dctdjkjljv Dbiytdcrbv dscnegbk Fktrcfylh Ghjrjamtd. Jy dsitk yf cwtye edthtyysv, ndthlsv ifujv. Gthdst ;t ckjdf tuj ghjybrkb lj uke,bys cthltw. Ghjrjamtd ujdjhbk, xnj ;bpym b ,jhm,f ktybyuhflwtd d eckjdbz[ ,kjrfls -- эnj ktutylfhyfz bcnjhbz ve;tcndf, cnjqrjcnb b vfccjdjuj uthjbpvf. Following Vsevolod Vishnevsky Aleksandr Prokofev spoke. He strode onto the stage with a confident, firm gait. His first words went to the depths of the heart. Prokofev said, that the life and struggle of the citizens of Leningrad under the conditions of the blockade -- that was a legendary story of courage, resilience, and massive heroism.

The oxymoronic combination У (for example, Cfif Ghjrjamtd) indicates that the speaker might personally address the individual with У , but still gives a more complete identification of the individual for the addressee.

As noted, there is a high degree of correlation between the mode of address and the forms of names. As a rule, formal address in B is correlated with И J, and informal address in is correlated with У . There are exceptions, which have distinct sociological overtones. Some members of the intelligentsia use the diminutive name in address (У ) to express familiarity but, at the same time, maintain respectful distance by using address with B. The combination of with ИJ is possible in a highly specific milieu. One of those who wrote reminiscences about Prokofev commented, “I considered him a senior colleague, addressed him with ty, though as Alexander Andreevich”: age merits the respect of И J at the same time as the enforced solidarity of party culture implies .

Table 4.11 gives a list of name forms, with a statement of their typical meanings and stylistic connotations. By “given” is meant reference to an individual whose identity is already established in the text; by “introduced” is meant a process of establishing or introducing an individual in the current text.