Complete Reduction of Unstressed Vowels in the Standard Russian Language and its Reflection in Dictionaries

The article is devoted to the complete reduction of unstressed vowels in the standard Russian language. The article shows that the cases of dieresis of unstressed vowels in the dictionaries of various types are not always represented consistently. For example, in the academic “Dictionary of the Modern Standard Russian language” variants with a graphic reflection of the vowel dieresis are noted in prítolka, páportnik, zhávronok, púgvitsa, but “Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language” fixes only the variants púgvitsa, púgvichnikъ. In orthoepic sources, the corresponding pronunciation recommendations are also contradictory: in the “Dictionary of Stress and Pronunciation of Words in the Russian Language” the variants príto[lk]a and próvo[lk]a are marked as incorrect, while in the “Big Orthoepic Dictionary” these variants are recognized as the main ones. The article proposes to distinguish, on the one hand, the lexical or morphological attachment of the vowel dieresis to a specific word or morpheme, and, on the other hand, the actual lexicalization of a pronunciation without a vowel. In the first case, fixing variants with vowel dieresis in orthoepic-type dictionaries seems redundant, since the choice of pronunciation, as a rule, depends on phrasal position and occurs automatically. In the second case, the pronunciation of the words does not necessarily derive from their spelling, and therefore they require orthoepic commentary.