Russian morphophonemics in a nutshell: The verb vstat’ ‘stand up’

Abstract

This paper argues against a number of accounts found in dictionaries of Russian word-formation and shows that the verb vstat' ‘stand up' (1) even synchronically is derived from stat' ‘become' and (2) is formed via the prefix vz- rather than v-. We provide semantic, historical, morphophonemic, and typological arguments in favor of this analysis. We argue that the verb vstat' is morphologically complex, but not fully analyzable due to a lack of formal transparency. The affix-root overlap found in the verb vstat' refers to a distinct pattern of Russian historical morphophonemics. Our findings conform to the theory of gradient structures in morphology (Hay & Baayen 2005) and contribute an additional type to the degrees of analyzability described in Panov 1968 & 1999 and Kubrjakova 1970.