Introduction

Spelling (from the Greek ορθο – ‘correct’ and γραφος – ‘I write’) is a historically developed system of rules establishing the spelling of words. In school practice, we often use the term spelling (from the Greek Orthos - 'correct' and gramma - 'letter'), it refers to spellings determined by spelling rules.

The theory of Russian spelling began to take shape back in the 18th century. V.K. made a great contribution to its formation. Trediakovsky, M.V. Lomonosov, Y.K. Groth, F.F. Fortunatov.

Modern Russian spelling is based on the Code of Rules published in 1956. The rules of the Russian language are reflected in Russian grammars and spelling dictionaries. Special school spelling dictionaries are published for schoolchildren.

Language changes as society changes. Many new words and expressions, both our own and borrowed, appear. The rules for writing new words are established by the Spelling Commission and recorded in spelling dictionaries. The most complete modern spelling dictionary was compiled under the editorship of the spelling scientist V.V. Lopatin (M., 2000).

Russian orthography is a system of rules for writing words. It consists of five main sections:

1) transmission of the phonemic composition of words in letters;

2) continuous, separate and hyphenated (semi-continuous) spellings of words and their parts;

3) the use of upper and lowercase letters;

4) transferring part of a word from one line to another;

5) graphic abbreviations of words.

Spelling sections are large groups spelling rules, Related different types difficulties in conveying words in writing. Each section of spelling is characterized by certain principles, underlying the spelling system.

Principles of Russian spelling– basic theoretical principles on which the rules are based. Each principle of spelling unites a group of rules that are the application of this principle to specific linguistic phenomena.

L. V. Shcherba (1880-1944; Russian Soviet linguist, academician, who made a great contribution to the development of psycholinguistics, lexicography and phonology; one of the creators of phoneme theory) wrote: “There are four principles: 1) phonetic, 2) etymological, or word production, otherwise morphological, 3) historical and 4) ideographic. Well, phonetic - that's clear. This means that as it is written, so it is pronounced. In Russian and many other languages, there are many words that are written the way they are pronounced, without any tricks. This is best seen in Italian. The alphabetic associations there are complex, but the orthographic principle is basically phonetic.” An example would be the spelling of prefixes in h-With(be h gifted - be With deceased) or a radical change in the initial And on s after prefixes ending in a consonant ( And play - once s play).

The principle behind L.V. Shcherby is in second place, in modern spelling it is called phonemic. It represents the spelling of words according to a rule. In other words, we must determine which phoneme stands in place of the sound we are interested in. And from the phoneme we go to the letter. To define a phoneme, we must place it in a strong position (for vowels this is the position under stress, for consonants - before the vowel, before sonorants ( l, m, n, R, j) and before V). Based on this principle following rules: spelling of unstressed vowels in the root (in O dyanoy - in O yes, r e ka – p e ki, n e demonic - n e bo), spelling of voiced and voiceless consonants in the root (lu G– lu G a, co T– to T ik, co d– to d ovy), spelling of most prefixes and suffixes.

The next principle of Russian spelling is traditional, or historical. This principle applies when the choice of letter cannot be verified by a strong position, since there is no such position in modern language, the word is written according to tradition, and its spelling is determined by the dictionary. Rules such as the spelling of unchecked and alternating vowels and consonants in the root (near O live - near A to go; mo G y – mo and et), spelling of vowels after sibilants and ts (sh e sweat, sh O rokh, ts s gan, prince And p), use ь after sizzling (burn b, things b, gallop b, you hang b), combined and separate spelling of adverbs (wad, rashly, mean, mean, etc.), adverbial combinations and some prepositions (during, as a result), spelling of the endings of masculine adjectives of the genitive case singular - Wow(handsome - beautiful Wow; smart - smart Wow) and etc.

The fourth principle of spelling is semantic, or differentiating. It is implemented in situations where it is necessary to distinguish between equally sounding words by means of spelling: ba ll(score) and ba l(dance evening), ok e g (verb) and ож O g (noun), crying b(verb) and crying (noun), carcasses (masculine noun) and carcasses b(feminine noun), O reel (bird), and ABOUT rel (city).

In addition to those mentioned, in Russian orthography there are principles regulating merged, separate and hyphenated spelling, use of capital letters, rules of word hyphenation, etc.

The basic principles on which the rules for fused, separate or hyphenated spelling of words are based are defined as lexical-syntactic and word-formation-grammatical.

Lexico-syntactic The principle of Russian orthography is associated with the distinction between a word and a phrase: parts of a word are written together, and individual words in a phrase are written separately. Based on this principle, spellings such as chamber are distinguished lightly wounded – slightly wounded in the hand; evergreen bush – evergreen there is grass in the alpine meadows; look into the distance- to peer V sea distance; act at random- hope for good luck; nowhere ever I wasn’t - I didn’t know no where he was, never he is back; not dry cloth - not dry per night clothes, etc.

Spelling difficulties here are associated with the fact that writers have to decide whether a given piece of speech is a separate word or a phrase, which is often difficult to do due to the unclear boundaries between these linguistic units.

Word formation and grammar the principle establishes continuous or hyphenated spelling of complex adjectives and nouns based on a formal feature - the presence or absence of a suffix in the first part compound adjective and connecting vowel - O- (-e-) in a compound noun. The adjectives fruit and berry are spelled differently O-berry, potato, vegetable and potato But-vegetable, gas-oil and gas in-petroleum, water soluble and water But-soluble. If the first part of a complex adjective has a suffix, the word is written with a hyphen; if there is no suffix, it is written together. Nouns with a connecting vowel - O- (-e-) are written together, and nouns without a connecting vowel are written separately (cf. glands O concrete, wood O park, land e businessman, birds e catch and sofa - bed, sister - hostess, cafe - dining room, etc.).

Some spellings explained traditional the principle by which parts of modern single word, going back to the combination of words: under the arm,carelessly,without waking up,incessantly,skin-tight,in girth,for slaughter etc.

point-linear:

railway station (train station)(Fig. 2)

Rice. 2. Railway station()

hyphens:

litera (literature)

physical education (physical education)(Fig. 3)

Rice. 3. Children in physical education ()

The ability to correctly abbreviate words in writing is a skill that is very useful for your future adult life. It will be needed when taking notes on texts, lectures, etc. And it is spelling that is responsible for this. If you open a reference book on Russian spelling and punctuation, a lot of space will be devoted to this section, where all the graphic abbreviations you need will be given.

Another section that spelling deals with is moving part of a word from one line to another.

Whatever you think about the fact that now this section of spelling is no longer strict nature, all the same, there are some basic rules that everyone writing in Russian should use. Although there are not very many of them now.

There are six basic hyphenation rules to consider. But the idea that this is an optional spelling point is wrong. Because if you moved some word, for example, car like this:

this will indicate that you do not understand that word transfer is based on the principle of taking into account the syllabic structure of a word and taking into account the composition of the word. This will be the first signal that you do not have sufficient command of spelling norms and rules.

Look at the audio chain:

(in) a new way

You cannot know what kind of word it is or what part of speech it belongs to.

in a new way- preposition and adjective

in a new way- adverb

Spelling is also responsible for this. Exists a large number of rules that you became familiar with in the spelling of compound nouns and adjectives. You've worked on this before.

This section is also in charge of spelling.

For example, the sound form of a word eagle(Fig. 4) will not tell you what kind of word is in front of you (is it a common noun or proper noun). And only writing with a capital or small letter will help you solve this problem:

eagle(common noun)

(city name)

The most basic, most important section of spelling is transferring in letters on a letter the sound composition of a word. The vast majority of the rules you learn in school are concentrated in this section.

When they talk about the principles of Russian spelling (there are three of them), they mean the principles of this section.

The leading principle of Russian spelling is morphological(morphematic).

The essence of the principle: it is necessary to consistently convey the same morpheme in writing. For example, uniformly convey the same root in all words with the same root, the same prefix, the same suffix.

This principle applies not only, say, to the roots of words with the same root, prefixes, suffixes, but also to any significant part of the word, including the ending.

Consider an example:

Into the corridor e (Fig. 5)

We write the prepositional case ending in the word form e, although it sounds in an unstressed position And-shaped sound. You can say that at the end of this word form the letter is written e, because it is a masculine noun, of the second substantive declension. But why should you write the ending in the prepositional case of masculine words of the second substantive declension? -e ? Let us remember that the same morpheme is conveyed uniformly in writing. This means that you need to understand that the service morpheme called “ending” can be checked on any other word of the same characteristic (m.r., singular, pr. p.).

For example, on the table e (under accent sounds e) (Fig. 6).

Rice. 6. Vase on the table ()

Therefore, in the prepositional case of the second declension you need to write -e .

This is a wonderful principle of Russian spelling that organizes all our writing.

Let's take a number of some words with the same prefix, which do not change in Russian (with a few exceptions), and see how this prefix behaves in sound level:

from blossom

from shade

from chain

from give

from since then

It is quite obvious that some changes occur in speech at the sound level, which our spelling does not reflect, because it is based on this basic principle - convey the same significant part of a word in the same way in writing.

This is not the only principle of spelling. There are two more principles that we encounter when conveying the sound appearance of a word using letters.

The second principle is called phonetic.

The essence of the principle:I write as I pronounce and hear.

It would seem that this principle is very simple and easy. But the number of rules that obey this principle in the Russian language is small. You are well aware of the spelling rule for spelling prefixes ending in h- ,With- . These prefixes, in accordance with the orthographic principle, are allowed to convey the actual sounding consonant in the outcome of these prefixes. But in fact, there is not much phonetic here. Sounds before vowels h and you are allowed to write h:

offend - once offend

But before the root, which begins with a voiced consonant, you sound h, and you need to write at the end of these prefixes h.

Look at the adjective:

without delicious

In this word, the root begins with a voiceless consonant; when pronounced, deafening occurs h V With.

We can conclude that this rule is not entirely phonetic.

Look at the verb:

races sew- there is no deafness in pronunciation With, not ringing h, but it sounds like a long consonant w.

That is, it would seem phonetic rule you need to adjust it a little and formulate it like this:

Prefixes ending in h-, will be written with a letter h, if the root begins with a letter denoting a vowel sound or a voiced consonant.

The letter will be written With at the end of these prefixes if the root begins with a letter denoting a voiceless consonant.

There are also phonetic spellings and another familiar rule:

If the root begins with a vowel sound And and a prefix ending in a consonant is added, then in accordance with the pronunciation it is allowed to reflect this change in sound in writing And into sound s:

And play - under s play

This is a phonetic principle, a phonetic rule. But if you think about it, after a hard consonant, with all the desire, it is impossible to pronounce only And, vowel only s:

b s l - b And l

m s l - m And l

P s l - p And l

This rule has two exceptions:

1. you cannot reflect live pronunciation in writing s-shaped sound, if these are two Russian prefixes inter- And above- :

between And Institute evening

above And interesting game

In these words we hear the sound s, but we write the letter at the beginning of the roots of these words And. Because if we allowed writing -s after the prefix inter- , then one of the basic rules Russian spelling ( live-shi write with a letter And). The same goes for the Russian console above- : in the Russian language there is not a single word with a sequence of letters hey(only hee), so we write And at the root of the word after this prefix.

2. after foreign language prefixes, the letters cannot be changed following the pronunciation And on s. This rule is not entirely good for Russian speakers in that a native speaker must know the list of these foreign language prefixes. But in the main school rule you have them all listed ( counter-, dis-, ab-, hell- and etc.)

There is another principle according to which words are written. It is called differently: traditional, historical, traditional-historical.

The essence of the principle: I write the word the way it was written before.

There are very few such words of traditional spelling (dictionary words) in the original Russian vocabulary. You become familiar with the spelling of these words in elementary school:

O gherkin, m O rock, with O tank

These are all vocabulary words you learn in elementary school. Remember what's in the word dog you need to write the letter in the first syllable O, although it sounds A, not so difficult.

Even if you follow the changing pronunciation of words, this does not mean that you need to immediately change the spelling of the word. Or, for example, it so happened that in the word dog vowel O We cannot check in any way with the help of a strong position, we cannot find in the same root words or in the forms of this word that the emphasis falls on it. But this also does not mean that this spelling of the word should be changed. We'll just remember how to spell this word. The spelling of any language must be conservative; it must record and restrain those unconditional linguistic changes that occur. Changes have occurred with these vocabulary norms (our native words of origin). Previously, these words had the same root words, where the spelling of the vowel O or A was checked (the stress fell on these vowels). With the development of language, these “relatives” were lost, but this does not mean that the spelling of words needs to be changed.

The Russian language has a large number of borrowed words that are written in accordance with the traditional historical principle. This internationalisms - words that are created according to the models of Greek and Latin words and which have entered almost all Western European languages. They will be written the same in these languages. For example:

passionarity -passionarity

As you can see, in Russian we write double in this word With, which means this is double With will be written in English, and in French, and in German languages. Their spelling is the same. These traditional historical words, in which we, relying on our language, cannot check the spelling of vowels, consonants, double consonants, must remember or find out their spelling in dictionary order. There are a lot of such words today. All languages develop, coexist with each other, and interact. And these internationalisms are present in every language. This presents some difficulty for the student, for the writer. Therefore the quantity vocabulary dictations high school great.

Knowing some other Western language can sometimes help, because we often deal with internationalisms.

Let's return to the morphological principle. There are two more things that often no one thinks about. For example, with the prefix from- There are all sorts of changes in pronunciation. Everyone knows that a vowel can be checked by placing it in a strong position (under stress). And for a consonant, the strong position will be the position before the vowel. That is why our orthography with its leading morphological principle is very well and clearly organized. We always, without even realizing it, do a quick check and understand that in some word, for example, the root is - water-, and in the other - the prefix from- or under-, because we carry out these checks without thinking.

“A high degree of organization of spelling is an indicator of the high culture of a nation.”

Our spelling meets this requirement.

Rice. 7. S.I. Ozhegov ()

And another famous linguist, Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba (Fig. 8), wrote:

Rice. 8. L.V. Shcherba ()

The spelling of the Russian language is organized very well. All exceptions to the rules only emphasize the good organization of the spelling system of the Russian language.

Bibliography

Lvova S.I., Lvov V.V. Russian language. Grade 11. - M.: Russian word, 2014.
R.N.Buneev, E.V.Buneeva, L.Yu.Komissarova, Z.I.Kurtseva, O.V.Chindilova. Russian language. Grade 11. - M: Balass, 2012.
Goltsova N.G., Shamshin I.V., Mishcherina M.A. Russian language. 10-11 grades. Textbook. - M.: Russian Word, 2014.

Pandia.ru ().
Textologia.ru ().
Pyat-pyat.ru ().

Homework

List the areas that spelling covers. Explain the essence of the basic principles of spelling.
Rewrite by inserting the missing letters.

Without...blatant, without...activity, without...inventory, without...togovy, take...up, take...down, mis...information, counter...gra, notorious...known, scanned, to...to summarize, post...impressionist, before ...Yulsky, super...refined, sport...gra, from...long ago, from...zmal, with...improvise, trans...Ordanian, without...hidden, without...initiative, dis...infection, inter...institutional, above...individual, not without...interesting , ob...cut, excellent, pre...impressionistic, pre...history, super...industrialization.

Russian spelling is a system of rules for writing words.

It consists of five main sections:

1) transmission of the phonemic composition of words in letters;
2) continuous, separate and hyphenated (semi-continuous) spellings of words and their parts;
3) the use of upper and lowercase letters;
4) transferring part of a word from one line to another;
5) graphic abbreviations of words.

Spelling sections - these are large groups of spelling rules associated with different types of difficulties in conveying words in writing. Each section of spelling is characterized by certain principles underlying the spelling system.

Principles of Russian spelling

Modern Russian orthography is based on several principles. The main one is MORPHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE, the essence of which is as follows:
morpheme (significant part of the word: root, prefix, suffix, ending) maintains a single lettering , although during pronunciation the sounds included in this morpheme may change.

Yes, root bread in all related words it is written the same, but pronounced differently depending on the place in the word occupied by the vowel or consonant sounds, cf.: [hl"ieba], [hl"bavos]; console under- in the words file and knock down the same, despite different pronunciations, cf.: [ptp"il"it"] [padb"it"]; the adjectives mocking and boastful have the same suffix -liv- ; unstressed ending and percussion are designated the same: in the table - in the book, big - great, blue - mine and so on.

Guided by this very principle, we check the truth of a particular morpheme by selecting related words or changing the form of the word so that the Morpheme is in a strong position (under stress, before p, l, m, n, j, etc.), those. would be clearly marked.

The role of the morphological principle in spelling is great, if we keep in mind that in the Russian language there is a widely developed system of intramorphemic alternations due to various reasons.
Along with the morphological one, it also acts PHONETIC PRINCIPLE, according to which words or parts thereof are written as they are pronounced .

For example, prefixes on h change depending on the quality of the consonant following the prefix: before the voiced consonant, the letter is heard and written in the prefixes h (without-, through-, from-, bottom-, times-, rose-, through-, through-), and before the voiceless consonant in the same prefixes the letter is heard and written With , cf.: object - exclaim, beat - drink, overthrow - send down and so on.

The operation of the phonetic principle also explains the writing of vowels O - e after sibilants in suffixes and endings different parts speech, where the choice of the corresponding vowel depends on stress, cf.: a scrap - a knife, a brocade - nomadic, a candle - a cloud and so on.

Root vowel And after Russian prefixes the consonant becomes s and is designated by this letter also in accordance with the phonetic principle, i.e. written as it is heard and pronounced: background, pre-July, prank, play out and so on.

Also valid in our spelling HISTORICAL, or TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLE, according to which words are written the way they were written before, in the old days .

So, spelling vowels And , A , at after the hissing ones - this is an echo of the most ancient state phonetic system Russian language. Dictionary words, as well as borrowed ones, are written using the same principle. Such spellings can only be explained using the historical laws of language development as a whole.

Exists in modern spelling and PRINCIPLE OF DIFFERENTIATED WRITING (semantic principle), Whereby words are written depending on their lexical meaning , cf.: burnt(verb) and burn(noun), company(group of people) and campaign(any event) ball(dance evening) and point(unit of assessment).

In addition to those mentioned in the spelling, it is necessary to note PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUOUS, HYPHEN AND SEPARATE WRITING: Difficult words we write together or with a hyphen, and combinations of words - separately.

To summarize, we can say that the variety of rules of Russian orthography is explained, on the one hand, by the peculiarities of the phonetic and grammatical structure of the Russian language, the specifics of its development, and on the other hand, by interaction with other languages, both Slavic and non-Slavic. The result of the latter is a large number of words of non-Russian origin, the spelling of which has to be memorized.

The principles of Russian spelling are considered very complex, but compared with other European languages, where there are a lot of traditional, conventional spellings, the spelling of the Russian language as a whole is quite logical, you just need to understand what it is based on.

This article talks about morphological principle Russian spelling, examples of which are the majority of words in our language.

What is morphology

Understanding what the morphological principle of Russian spelling is, examples of which are given already in the first grade primary school, is impossible without the concept of morphology as such. What is morphology? In what areas of knowledge is it customary to talk about it?

The application of the concept of morphology is much wider than the linguistic field, that is, the field of language study. The easiest way to explain what it is is by using the example of biology, where this term actually comes from. Morphology studies the structure of the organism, its components and the role of each part in the life of the organism as a whole. For example, the internal morphology of a person is anatomy.

Thus, morphology in the linguistic sense of the word studies the anatomy of a word, its structure, that is, what parts it consists of, why these parts can be distinguished and why they exist. The “components” of a person are the heart, liver, lungs; flower - petals, pistil, stamens; and the words are prefix, root, suffix and ending. These are the “organs” of the word that are in complex interaction with each other and perform their functions. The topic “Morphemics and word formation” at school is aimed specifically at studying these components words, the laws of their connection.

Preliminarily answering the question about the main principle of our spelling, we can say that we write down the constituent parts of a word (morphemes) as elements of writing; this is the morphological principle of Russian spelling. Examples (the simplest ones to begin with): in the word “balls” we write I, as we write it down, we transfer the root “ball” without changes, just as we hear it in the word “ball”.

Are there other principles of spelling?

To understand the essence of the morphological principle of Russian orthography, it needs to be considered against the background of other principles.

Let us clarify what spelling or spelling is. These are the rules that govern writing. specific language. The main principle that underlies these rules is not always morphological. Besides this, first of all we need to talk about phonetic and traditional principles.

Recording sounds

For example, you can write down a word as it is heard, that is, write down sounds. We would write the word “oak” like this: “dup”. This principle of writing words (when nothing is important except the sound of the word and the transmission of this sound) is called phonetic. It is followed by children who have just learned to write: they write down what they hear and say. In this case, the uniformity of any prefix, root, suffix or ending may be violated.

Phonetic principle in Russian

There are not many examples of phonetic spelling. It affects, first of all, the rules for writing the prefix (without- (bes-)). In cases where we hear the sound C at its end (before voiceless consonants), we write down exactly this sound (carefree, uncompromising, unscrupulous), and in those cases when we hear Z (before voiced consonants and sonorants), we write it down (uncomplaining, carefree, slacker).

Traditional principle

Another important principle- this is traditional, it is also called historical. It lies in the fact that a certain spelling of a word can only be explained by tradition or habit. Once upon a time, a word was pronounced, and therefore written, in a certain way. Time has passed, the language has changed, its sound has changed, but according to tradition the word still continues to be written this way. In Russian, this, for example, concerns the spelling of the well-known “zhi” and “shi”. Once upon a time in the Russian language these combinations were pronounced “softly”, then this pronunciation disappeared, but the writing tradition was preserved. Another example of traditional spelling is the loss of connection between a word and its “test” words. This will be discussed below.

Disadvantages of the traditional way of writing words

In the Russian language, there are quite a lot of such “evidence” of the past, but if you compare, for example, with the English language, it will not seem to be the main one. IN English language Most of the writings are explained precisely by tradition, since no reforms were carried out in it for an extremely long time. That is why English-speaking schoolchildren are forced not so much to understand the rules of spelling words as to memorize the spellings themselves. Only tradition, for example, can explain why in the word “high” only the first two letters are “voiced”, and the next two are written simply “out of habit”, denoting zero sounds in the word.

Widespread use of the traditional principle in the Russian language

As mentioned above, the spelling of the Russian language follows not only the morphological principle, but also the phonetic and traditional one, from which it is quite difficult to escape completely. Most often we come across the traditional or historical principle of Russian spelling when we write down so-called dictionary words. These are words whose spelling can only be explained historically. For example, why do we write “ink” with an E? Or "underwear" with E? The fact is that historically these words are associated with the names of colors - black and white, since at first ink was only black, and linen was only white. Then the connection between these words and those from which they were derived was lost, but we continue to write them that way. There are also words whose origin can be explained using modern words generally impossible, but their writing is strictly regulated. For example: cow, dog. The same applies to foreign words: their spelling is regulated by words of another language. These and similar words just need to be learned.

Another example is the spelling qi/tsy. Only convention can explain why I is written in the roots of words after T (with the exception of some surnames, for example, Antsyferov, and the words tsyts, chicks, chicken, gypsy), and in the endings - Y. After all, the syllables in both cases are pronounced exactly the same and are subject to no verification.

There is no obvious logic when writing words with traditional spelling, and, you see, they are much harder to learn than “tested” words. After all, it is always easier to remember something that has an obvious explanation.

Why the morphological principle?

The role of the morphological principle in spelling is difficult to overestimate, because it regulates the laws of writing, makes it predictable, eliminates the need to memorize an endless number of words in traditional writing and “unraveling” spellings in phonetic writing. After all, in the end, the correct spelling of words is not a simple whim of linguists. This is what ensures easy understanding of the text, the ability to read any word “on sight”. Children's writing “vykhodnyi myzbabushkay hadili nayolku” makes reading the text difficult and slow. If we imagine that words will be written differently each time, the reader, his speed of reading the text and the quality of his perception will suffer from this, first of all, since all efforts will be aimed at “deciphering” the words.

Perhaps, for a language that is at least rich in word forms (that is, less rich in morphemes) and has fewer word-forming capabilities (the formation of words in the Russian language occurs very easily and freely, according to the most different models and using the most different ways), this principle would be suitable, but not for a Russian. If we add to this the rich cultural discourse, that is, the complexity and subtlety of thoughts that our language is designed to express, then a primitive phonetic notation is completely unacceptable.

The essence of the morphological principle of the Russian language. Examples

So, having examined the background of the existence of the morphological principle and found out what morphology is, let’s return to its essence. It's very simple. When we write down a word, we choose not sounds or words as recording elements, but parts of words, its constituent elements (prefixes, roots, suffixes, postfixes and inflections). That is, when writing a word, we build it, as if from cubes, not from but from more complex, meaningful formations - morphemes. And “transfer”, each part of the word must be written down unchanged. In the word “gymnastic” after N we write A, as in the word “gymnast”, since we are writing down an entire morpheme - the root “gymnast”. In the word “clouds” we write the first letter O, as in the form “cloud”, since we “transfer” the whole morpheme - the root “clouds”. It cannot be destroyed or modified, because the morphological principle says: write down the whole morpheme, regardless of how it is heard and pronounced. In the word “cloud”, in turn, we write the final O at the ending, as in the word “window” (this is the ending of a neuter noun in nominative case singular).

The problem of following the morphological principle in Russian writing

In Russian, the problem with writing according to morphological principles is that we constantly fall into the traps of our pronunciation. Everything would be simple if all morphemes always sounded the same. However, in speech everything happens completely differently, which is why children, following the phonetic principle, make so many mistakes.

The fact is that sounds in Russian speech are pronounced differently, depending on their position in the word.

Search for standard morphemes

For example, at the end of words we never pronounce a voiced consonant - it is always stunned. This is the articulatory law of the Russian language. It’s hard to imagine, but this doesn’t happen in all languages. The English, on the contrary, are always surprised when Russians try to apply this law and pronounce a voiceless consonant at the end, say, English word"dog". In a “stunned” form - “doc” - the word is completely unrecognizable to them.

To find out which letter should be written at the end of the word "steamer", we must pronounce the morpheme "move" in such a way as not to put it in the weak position of the absolute end of the word: "go". From this example of the use of a morpheme it is clear that its standard ends in D.

Another example is vowel sounds. Without stress, we pronounce them “fuzzy”; they sound clearly only under stress. When choosing a letter, we also follow the morphological principle of Russian orthography. Examples: to write the word “walk”, we must “check” the unstressed vowel - “pass”. This word has a clear, standard vowel sound, which means that we write it in a “weak” position - without stress. All of these are spellings that obey the morphological principle of Russian orthography.

We also restore other standards of morphemes, not only root ones, but also others (for example, we always write the prefix “NA” one way and no other way). And it is the standard morpheme, according to the morphological principle of Russian orthography, that we write down as an element when we write a word.

Thus, the morphological principle of Russian orthography presupposes knowledge about the structure of the word, its formation, part-speak, and grammatical features (otherwise it will be impossible to restore the standards of suffixes and endings). To write fluently and competently in Russian, you must have a rich lexicon- then the search for “standards” of morphemes will take place quickly and automatically. People who read a lot write competently, since a free orientation in the language allows them to easily recognize the connections between words and their forms. It is during reading that the understanding of the morphological principle of Russian orthography develops.

Basic principles of spelling

The first part of the spelling is letter designation the sound composition of words is its main part, since it corresponds more than other parts to the general letter-sound type of modern Russian writing and is directly related to two other factors of writing - the alphabet and graphics. The basic principle of this part and Russian orthography in general is morphological.

The morphological principle of orthography consists in the requirement (or establishment) of a uniform (within the positional alternation of sounds) spelling of morphemes (each specific morpheme separately: a given root, a given suffix, etc.), even if they are pronounced differently when changing phonetic positions. For example: word root city should always be written the same way - city-, although it is pronounced differently in different words and word forms: [ burnt], [proud]A, [city]A, at[gur't] and so on. Through uniform notation of morphemes, uniform spelling of words is achieved, which is the ultimate goal of orthography.

But the morphological principle is not the only possible principle of the orthography of letter-sound writing. In Russian writing there are other principles of spelling: phonetic (or purely sound), phonemic (phonemic), historical (traditional), etc. (there is also a differentiating principle).

The phonetic principle of spelling orients writing directly towards pronunciation: its main rule is “Write as you pronounce it!” Uniform spelling of words is achieved through uniform designation of individual speech sounds. The phonetic principle is used, for example, in Serbian and Belarusian orthography. In Russian writing, based on this principle, it would be possible to write something like vada, sat, gorath, piti and so on. Prefixes are written phonetically h (With): distribute — pull apart and etc.

With the phonemic principle, uniform spelling of words is achieved through uniform designation of phonemes. Some researchers believe that modern Russian orthography is built precisely on this principle. It is written mountain, garden, since in the roots of these words, from the point of view of the Moscow phonological school, phonemes /O/ And /d/. From the point of view of the St. Petersburg school, here the phonemes are respectively /A/ And /T/. In general, it is very difficult to be guided by the phonemic principle.

The historical principle of spelling advocates traditional spelling. Its main requirement can be briefly expressed by the formula: “Write as you wrote before!” (This principle is widely used in English spelling.) Traditionally spelled O in words O ding, O weight, With O tank and etc.

The differentiating principle consists in distinguishing in writing what is indistinguishable in pronunciation, although different in meaning: To A company And To O company, pla h (noun) - pla whose (leading, inclined verb), that w — that sew.

Guided by the phonetic principle, it is difficult to follow pronunciation when writing. In addition, pronunciation does not have strict uniformity: it is not without reason that we can say that everyone speaks and hears in their own way. If you are guided only by the phonetic principle, then achieving uniformity in writing is almost impossible.

The phonemic principle will require writers to do the very complex and difficult work of translating specific speech sounds—phoneme variants—into phonemes. In addition, the issue of the phonemic composition of words has not been resolved. Therefore, if the same facts of writing can be interpreted from the point of view of both phonemic and morphological principles, as is noted for many spellings ( garden, mountain, watch etc.), then it is easier to interpret them morphologically and consider the principle itself morphological.

The historical principle of spelling is designed mainly for memory and, as a result, is very irrational.

The differentiating principle has a very narrow scope of application - distinguishing certain homonyms (homophones) in writing. Therefore, it is usually not even considered a principle, but they only talk about differentiating spellings.

Unlike other principles, the morphological principle of spelling is characterized by high meaningfulness and significant simplicity. Orthography based on the morphological principle seems to be the most advanced and promising.

Principles of modern Russian spelling. Basic principles of Russian spelling