F. M. Borras (1918–1980)

In my third year of Russian language at UCLA many years ago, we were assigned portions of this book to read. We also used Pul'kina's "Uchebnik russkogo iazyka" [Pulkina's Textbook of Russian Grammar], as well as Townsend's "Continuing in Russian." I've tried to read "Russian Syntax" cover to cover a few times, and this time read the entire thing! Granted it took me a long, long time. but I did go from page 1 to the end. Now I'll start afresh from the beginning. It is kind of like reading a dictionary. For someone who has studied Russian, reads Russian, teaches Russian, and on occasion translates from Russian classical literature, this book fills a needed gap. It is a listing, organized by grammatical and/or lexical categories, of words, expressions, combinations that fall to the wayside in most 1-3 year Russian language textbooks, and for good reason. It is simply impossible to include every exception or unusual grammatical combinations in any textbook--and this is NOT a textbook. It merely lists them, and explains them as grammatically as possible. It is hard to know how to use this book, it's not that easy finding what you are looking for, so for the advanced student, especially one interested in translating literature, it seems to me that the best use of it is to dip into it every once in a while. This is what I plan to do as often as I can until all those funny language eccentricities stick!… (més)