A Reference Grammar of Russian.

This textbook describes and systematizes all aspects of the grammar of Russian--including patterns of orthography, sounds, inflection, syntax, tense-aspect-mood, word order, and intonation. It is especially concerned with the meaning of combinations of words (constructions) and the core concept is that of the predicate history (a record of the states of entities through time and across possibilities). Using predicate histories, the book presents an integrated account of the semantics of verbs, nouns, case, and aspect. It will appeal to students, scholars and language professionals interested in Russian.

Alan Timberlake is Professor of Slavic linguistics at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The Nominative Object in Slavic, Baltic, and West Finnic (1974).