Learn Hardcore Russian: Каждый студент приносит свой учебник.

Even though logically we’re talking about more than one student, the grammar is “each individual one,” so Russian uses singular with каждый.

If you wanted to talk explicitly about the group as a plural, you’d say:

Все студенты приносят свои учебники. – All (the) students bring their textbooks.

Why is it каждый студент приносит, not каждый студент приносят?

The verb must agree in number with the grammatical subject.

каждый студент is singular (each student, one by one)
therefore the verb is 3rd person singular: приносит

So:

✅ Каждый студент приносит свой учебник.
❌ Каждый студент приносят свой учебник. (ungrammatical)

If you make the subject plural, then the verb changes to plural:

Все студенты приносят свои учебники. – All the students bring their textbooks.

What is the infinitive of приносит, and how is this verb conjugated?

The infinitive is приносить – to bring (by carrying), imperfective.

Present tense conjugation (1st conjugation, with a stem change: нос → нес):

я приношу – I bring
ты приносишь – you bring (singular, informal)
он / она / оно приносит – he / she / it brings
мы приносим – we bring
вы приносите – you bring (plural/formal)
они приносят – they bring

In the sentence, приносит is 3rd person singular (он/она/оно), agreeing with каждый студент.

What’s the difference between приносить and принести?

They are aspectual pairs:

приносить – imperfective: to bring (generally, repeatedly, or in progress)
принести – perfective: to bring (one-time, completed result)

So:

Каждый студент приносит свой учебник.
– Each student brings / is in the habit of bringing his/her textbook. (habit, rule)
Каждый студент должен принести свой учебник.
– Each student must bring his/her textbook (on that particular occasion, result-focused).

In instructions about what students usually or regularly do, приносить is the natural choice.

Why do we use свой instead of его / её / их for “his / her / their”?

Свой is a reflexive possessive pronoun. It means one’s own and refers back to the subject of the clause.

In this sentence, the subject is каждый студент. So свой учебник means:

каждый студент приносит свой учебник
– each student brings his own / her own textbook.

If you said:

Каждый студент приносит его учебник.

a Russian speaker would understand this as:

each student brings his textbook = the textbook belonging to some other male person, not to the student himself.

So when the owner is the same as the subject, Russian strongly prefers свой. It works for all genders and numbers:

я люблю свою работу – I love my (own) job
мы делаем своё домашнее задание – we do our (own) homework

Does свой agree with студент or with учебник? Why is it свой, not своя / своё / свои?

Свой must agree in gender, number, and case with the noun it modifies, not with the owner.

Here it modifies учебник:

учебник is masculine, singular, accusative (but inanimate, so same as nominative form)

So we use свой (masculine singular):

свой учебник – one’s own textbook

Other examples:

своя тетрадь – one’s own notebook (тетрадь is feminine)
своё письмо – one’s own letter (письмо is neuter)
свои книги – one’s own books (plural)

The gender/number of the possessor (студент – male or female) does not change the form of свой. Only the noun учебник matters.

Why is учебник in this form? What case is it, and why doesn’t it change?

Учебник is in the accusative case because it is the direct object of the verb приносит (what does each student bring? – the textbook).

For masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative = nominative form.

Nominative (dictionary form): учебник
Accusative (direct object, inanimate): учебник (no change)

Compare with a masculine animate noun, where the accusative looks like the genitive:

Nominative: студент – student
Accusative: студента – (I see) the student

So there is a case change here (nominative → accusative), but for учебник it is simply not visible in the ending.

Why is учебник singular? In English we might say “students bring their textbooks (plural).”

Russian often uses the singular with каждый (each/every) when we mean “one per person”:

Каждый студент приносит свой учебник.
– Each student brings his/her own textbook (one textbook per student).

You could say:

Каждый студент приносит свои учебники.
– Each student brings his/her textbooks (more than one per student).

And for a general statement about the group:

Студенты приносят учебники. – Students bring textbooks.
Все студенты приносят свои учебники. – All the students bring their textbooks.

So the singular учебник matches the idea that each student brings one personal textbook.

Can I change the word order? For example: Студент каждый приносит свой учебник?

Neutral word order here is subject–verb–object:

Каждый студент приносит свой учебник.

Putting каждый after студент as Студент каждый приносит… sounds either poetic, stylistically marked, or simply odd in normal speech.

More natural variations that keep the meaning:

Каждый студент свой учебник приносит.
(slight emphasis on свой учебник)
Свой учебник приносит каждый студент.
(emphasis on свой учебник, and that everyone does this)

But for a textbook-style, neutral sentence, Каждый студент приносит свой учебник is the best default version.

Does приносит here mean a one-time future action (“will bring”) or a general rule (“brings / should bring”)?

In Russian, the present tense of an imperfective verb like приносить can express:

Habitual / general truth – what usually happens:
- Каждый студент приносит свой учебник.
  – Every student brings his/her textbook (as a rule).
Present in-progress – what is happening now:
- Он сейчас приносит свои вещи. – He is (currently) bringing his things.

In your sentence, with каждый, it clearly describes a habitual rule (e.g., classroom policy).
For a specific future obligation, you’d normally use должен + infinitive or a perfective verb:

Завтра каждый студент должен принести свой учебник.
– Tomorrow each student must bring their textbook.

How is Каждый студент приносит свой учебник pronounced, and where is the stress?

Stresses (bolded vowels):

Ка́ждый – KAzh-dyy (stress on Ка; final -ый is an unstressed reduced vowel)
студе́нт – stoo-DYENT (stress on де)
прино́сит – pree-NO-sit (stress on но)
свой – one syllable, like English “svoy” with a cluster [sv]
уче́бник – oo-CHYEB-nik (stress on че)

Together (slowly):
Ка́ждый студе́нт прино́сит свой уче́бник.

Could I say Каждый студент должен приносить свой учебник? How is that different?

Yes, that’s correct but slightly different in nuance.

Каждый студент приносит свой учебник.
– Describes what actually happens as a regular fact/rule: they do bring it.
Каждый студент должен приносить свой учебник.
– Emphasizes obligation: each student should / must bring their textbook.
It doesn’t necessarily say whether they really do it; it states the rule/requirement.

So adding должен shifts the focus from description to requirement.