3.6 Grammar: Case and Word Order in Russian

A word about that word CASE:

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When it comes to word order in a sentence, there are a couple of things to keep in mind as an English speaker learning Russian. First, as English speakers, you probably never thought about this, but we are used to a fairly strict Subject – Verb – Object (SVO) word order. We are so used to it, in fact, we may have trouble at first imagining that sentences could be structured any other way. Right? The subject HAS to come first, we think, otherwise how would we know who’s doing what? You’re right. That’s why we order our sentences that way. BUT RUSSIAN ISN’T SO BOUND BY OUR RULES. 

For example:

Russian language does not require our strict SVO order, and it actually enjoys a freer ordering, albeit with some general rules. You will start to see that it is the case system of Russian that permits freer ordering of words, relative to that of English, in sentence composition. Huh?

For example, the following are all possible in Russian:

The order all depends on what information is old and new or what information is emphasized. It probably sounds strange (or extremely Yoda-like) to the typical English ear to say the following:

• ?At UT Austin studies he.
• ?At a bank works Michael.
• *Works at a bank Michael. (Even Yoda wouldn’t say this one.)

In Russian, however, these sentences, as shown above, are perfectly acceptable. IN GENERAL, in Russian, old information, also known as the ‘theme’, goes first. New information, also known as the ‘rheme’, goes last. New information, or the sought after information that answers a question, or the rheme, will coincide with the intonation center. New information TENDS to go last, but it does not have to. It can simply be emphasized.

Examine the following. Highlighted/bolded words indicate sentential emphasis or stress, or the word in question:

Note the following examples. The word order does not change but the questions are different. That is, the information sought is different each time, all depending on the sentential emphasis. Recall intonation constructions. A question without a question word (who, what, when, etc.) receives IC-3 on the word in question.