The Understanding of the History of Ablaut in Russian and its Pedagogical Application

This study examines the vowel-gradation/ablaut in Russian, i.e., the consistent changes of a root vowel within the structure of CVC, where occurs a series of changes of normal /e/ in the process of a qualitative or quantitative change, that is, according to the change of the normal vowel /e/, there occur many vowel-gradation/ablaut in Russian.: o-grade ( /e/ > /o/), e-grade (/ø/ or weak vowel /ь/ > /e/), zero-grade or reduced grade (by dropping a vowel > /ø/), or lengthened/long grade (quantitatively lengthening a vowel, /e/ > /ē/ or /ō/, so-called, lengthened/long e-grade and lengthened/long o-grade, respectively. The Russian ablaut provides grammatical information or linguistic characteristics, which is productive or at least marginally productive in Russian conjugation, aspectual minimal pairs, verbal or nominal derivation, etc., for cognate words. For example, cognate words have a series of vowel-gradation, which categorizes grammatical distinctions as follows: со-бр-а-ть (pf.) - со-бир-а-ть (impf.) ‘to collect’ - бер-у ‘I take’, бер-ёшь ‘you take’, бер-ут ‘they take’ - со-бор ‘synod’, с-бор ‘assembly’, etc. These cognates represent vowel-alternations of /ø/ ≈ /и/ ≈ /е/ ≈ /о/ with the distinction of grammatical information, such as perfective vs. imperfective, verbal vs. nominal, infinitive vs. conjugated form. Moreover, Russian vowel-gradation can apply to pedagogical use. Understanding a systematic vowel change, namely, ablaut, can help L2 learners of Russian maximize the effect of learning Russian cognate words with grammatical and linguistic information. From a perspective of pedagogy, the Russian ablaut informs L2 learners of a series of cognate words, which belong to another language group, such as Germanic or Italian group, etc. as well as Slavic group. For this reason, it is useful for L2 learners to understand the Russian ablaut.