SPELLING OF PERSONAL VERBAL FORMS: NORM, USAGE, DYNAMICS

The article deals with the spelling of personal verbal forms. Types of conjugations have the same set of inflections which are identical in the 1st person sing. and present alternations 〈o〉||〈i〉, 〈u〉||〈a〉 in other forms. The phonematic principle does not apply to them. The standard solution of the orthogram based on the finale of the infinitive stem is unreliable when the corresponding syllable is unstressed and is accompanied by a considerable number of exceptions. It can be optimized using other factors: 1) the sound quality before the orthogram (the positional principle); 2) comparison with the corresponding sound in the infinitive (not always, the grammatical principle); 3) semantics (three verbs, the lexical principle); 4) memorization of exceptions (five verbs, the traditional principle). The dynamics of the ratio of the norm and the real usage, the variation of the conjugation types are established on the material of the National Corpus of Russian (NCR). The highest proportion of forms of the 2nd conjugation of the verbs stelit'(sya)/stlat'(sya) (the stimulus is a change of the dominant infinitive) and zybit'(sya) (the stimulus is a loss of l-epentheticum). Therefore the question of their codification is quite relevant. The verbs sypat'(sya), trepat'(sya), shchipat'(sya) change mainly the form of the 3rd person plur. (the stimulus is a prohibition of combinations [p’+-ut]), which is consistent with the codification of spellings of the type sypyat. The autonomy of the form of the 3rd person plur. has other manifestations: (1) the expansion of forms kolyat(sya), melyat(sya) (the stimulus is a generalization of the positional distribution 〈С+-ut〉 / 〈С’+-аt〉), (2) the dominant role of the forms drayut(sya), kleyut(sya) in the variation of the exception verbs drait'(sya), kleit'(sya), and (3) the traditional variation brezzhat(sya)/ brezzhut(sya), gradually decreasing without system support.