Questions for self Answers I

VII. The various characteristics of the colloquial speech within the literary language are determined by the spoken language’s lack of preparedness, its spontaneity, linear nature, and principal means of expression (which contribute both to economy and excess). Phonetically, the colloquial speech of the Russian literary language is marked by reduction of unstressed vowels, distortion of stressed vowels, contraction and loss of sounds, and simplification of consonant clusters. Lexically, it is characterized by descriptive and other types of abbreviated naming. Morphologically, there are peculiarities in the way some parts of speech function and the way some forms are built. Syntactically, there are special features in the syntax of the nominative case, the special role of the actual division of a sentence, the presence of special predicative- and nonpredicative-type syntactic models, and special characteristics of the syntactic bond of words and sentences and the sentence boundary itself. An important question is that of the universal features of various literary languages’ colloquial speech and of the typology of the colloquial speech.