Once you have learned the grammar of one of the Romance languages such as French or Spanish, your task is mostly done. Building vocabulary is largely a matter of learning a new pronunciation, slight spelling variations, and variant usage of English vocabulary, e.g. French expression, immense, formidable, gouvernement, sensationnel. English has not borrowed so many words from Russian as it has from French and Latin, so building vocabulary is a more serious challenge.

The way to a large vocabulary in Russian is through the other type of morphology: derivational morphology. Russian contains two types of morphology: inflectional and derivational. Derivational morphology is sometimes called 'word formation' because, rather than marking the relations of words within a phrase, its job is to create a set of new words from each old one. In Russian this is accomplished by adding prefixes and suffixes that change the meaning of the word rather than, say, just the tense, aspect or number.

This section of the on-line interactive grammar will deal with this aspect of Russian morphology. Let us begin with the creation of new verbs.

The fundamental principle to remember about Russian verbs is that they are basically imperfective. However, when a prefix is added to them, they automatically become perfective. Each imperfective base verb, like писать and читать, has one perfective mate whose meaning is identical with that of the imperfective form. Most often the perfective is derived from an unprefixed imperfective base verb by means of a prefix. For писать the prefix is на- (на-писать) and for читать it is про-, as in про-читать. The verb forms with and without the prefix in these cases form the perfective - imperfective pair required of most Russian verbs.

When prefixes other than the one designated to simply perfectivize the imperfective base verb are added, however, the result is a new verb. For example, when the prefix до- is added to the base verb писать, the result is a new verb meaning 'to finish writing'. Since prefixation perfectivizes verbs, this new verb now requires an imperfective mate. Imperfectives are usually formed from perfective verbs by the addition of a suffix -ывай-. The imperfective of дописа-, for example, is до-пис-ывай-. Of course, if the final root consonant is soft, the ending will be ивай-. And at last some good news about accent: the accent always falls on the syllable immediately preceding this suffix. Here are some more verbs derived by prefixation whose imperfective is subsequently formed with this suffix.

The suffix -ывай- has one unusual effect on the stems to which it attaches, visible in the examples above: if the vowel in the last syllable preceding this suffix is o, it is changed to a.

The verbal prefixes vary the modality of the verb in one of two ways. When added to verbs of motion, they indicate the direction or path of the action: over, under, across, along, up to, away from, as far as, convergence and divergance. When added to other verbs, they specify the stare of the action: whether it has been begun, finished, carried through successfully, reversed, repeated, or done excessively or mildly.

The verbal prefixes of path and direction added to verbs of motion are used in conjuction with a usually redundant preposition. The following table lists all the prefixes with the prepositions they are used with. Notice that the first four sets of prefixes in the following table form antonymic pairs.

Before examining how these prefixes are used to create new verbs in Russian, it is worth reminding ourselves of how Russian handles the lack of prepositions meaning 'to', 'at', and 'from'. The prepositions meaning specifically 'into' (в+Acc), 'onto' (на+Acc), and 'up to' к+Dat are used ambiguously to express 'to'. To express 'at', Russian uses the three-preposition set в+Prep, на+Prep, and у+Gen. Finally, to express 'from', Russian resorts to the triplet из+Gen 'out of', с+Gen 'down from' and от+Gen 'away from'. Here is a table demonstrating how these prepositions are applied as sets, such that any noun selecting one of these prepositions must select all in the set. For example, if в+Acc is used with школа (в школу) to indicate 'to school', then в+Prep and из+Gen must be used to express 'at school' (в школе) and 'from school' (из школы).

The choice between the use of в or на with nouns is generally based on whether the noun refers to a place or object with an interior in which human beings or animals conventionally go, e.g. в саду 'in the garden', в лесу 'in the woods', в здании 'in the building', в школе 'in school'. Exceptions include: на почте 'at post office', stations such as на вокзале 'train station', аеропорт 'airport', and factories: на заводе 'at the plant', на фабрике 'at the factory. All other concrete (на улице 'in the street') and abstract nouns (на концерте 'at the concert') require на plus the appropriate case.

Now here are some example sentences illustrating the literal meanings of the verbal prefixes on verbs of motion and the prepositional phrases that must accompany them. Notice in particular the first three sets of examples which show how the three sets of prepositions meaning 'to' and 'from' are used with and without the prefixe при- 'to' and у- '(away) from'.