Word Familiarity and Its Accentual Characteristics

Abstract

This article focuses on the pragmatic factor in determining word stress placement in contemporary Russian. The pragmatic factor refers to the speaker’s attitude – or that of a particular social or professional group – toward the words of their native language. On this basis, Russian vocabulary can be divided into familiar and unfamiliar words. Familiar words typically display a non-trivial accentual pattern, tending toward inflectional or mobile stress (accent paradigms B or C), while unfamiliar words generally exhibit fixed (immobile) stress on the stem or base (accent paradigm A). To explore the possible influence of the pragmatic factor in modern Russian, the study analyses the speech of Russian-speaking YouTubers. The findings reveal that the pragmatic factor affects borrowed Anglicisms and adjectives derived from English stems. The analysis further demonstrates that this influence is evident in loanwords and their derivatives, reflecting the ongoing process of linguistic assimilation – one of the most dynamic and productive trends in contemporary Russian.