Two BAP violations in Russian verbal stress

Abstract

Russian stress is known to be lexical (each morpheme is specified whether it is accented (and where), unaccented, post-accenting or pre-accenting) and governed by the so-called Basic Accentuation Principle (BAP): the leftmost accent is realized as word stress. I will discuss two cases where this principle is violated: infinitives and short-form passive past participles. I will show that in both of these cases a post-accenting root is combined with a pre-accenting suffix, yet, contrary to what is expected, stress surfaces on the suffix. I will show that the two suffixes are not accentually the same, providing evidence against equating unaccentability with either post- or pre-accentuation.