Linguistic analysis of
contact phenomena
The goals of the research
are:
1) Comprising a list of
contact-induced changes in the language of a specified community and the
fixation of corresponding features in source languages or features that
could bring into being non-genetic changes. Here we come to the
demonstration of non-genetic origin of a specified feature that is a key
problem in language contact studies.
2) The interpretation of
newly incorporated features as elements of a target system; the main task
here is to estimate how contact-induced features modified a target system.
3) Tracing the mechanism of
incorporating (borrowing or substratum interference) with respect to
relevant socio-historical context.
Major presentations of
results
A. Krasovitsky and Ch.
Sappok. The Isolated Russian Dialectal System in Contact with Tungus
Languages in Siberia and Far East.
This lecture was presented at the international conference “Languages in
Contact” in 1999 in Groningen (the Netherlands). It was based on the
data collected in the expedition to Russkoje Ustje in June 1997. Our
recordings indicate heavy structural interference primarily in phonetics
(which results both in phonetic inventory and in phonological rules). The
focus of the paper was modification which the phonological system in the
language of Russkoye Ustye underwent due to durable contacts with the Even
language. It involved destruction of original distribution of some
consonants and the merging of phonemes within contrastive sets;
displacement of old distinctive features; phonemicization of allophones.
Fundamental changes which the language of Russkoye Ustye underwent should
be interpreted as evidence of strong influence of the neighboring Even
population. A printed version of the lecture appeared in: Languages in
Contact. Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, vol. 28. Amsterdam –
Atlanta, GA 2000.
A. Krasovitsky and Ch.
Sappok. The Isolated Russian Dialectal System in Non-Russian Environment.
The
lecture read at the 3rd International Congress of
Dialectologists and Geolinguists (July 2000) reviewed contact-induced
changes in segmental and suprasegmental phonetics in the language of
Russkoye Ustye and Pokhodsk (case 2),which we visited a few months
earlier.
Ch. Sappok. A.
Krasovitsky.
Phonetic Processes in the Language of Russian Old Setttlers of the North. (in
Russian).The focus of the lecture presented at the international congress
“Russian language; history and our time” in Moscow (March 2001)
focused on contact-induced change in suprasegmental phonetics. It examined
in particular the development of vowel harmony in the languages of old
settlers in East Siberia (cases 1 and 2) which was in all likelihood the
result of Tungusic influence, namely from the Even language [Li 1996].
Meanwhile this change was partly motivated internally. For example the
deterioration of so called okanje in some of the Russian dialects,
i. e. the distinction of phonemes /o/ and /a/ in unstressed syllables,
results in pronunciation of a non-rounded allophone in accordance with
either of the phonemes, but if there is a rounded vowel in a stressed
syllable the replacement of the unstressed [o] may develop much slower
than before syllables with non-rounded stressed vowels.
A. Krasovitsky. Quantitative
and Dynamic Contrast as a Prosodic Means. (in
Russian, Materials & Studies in Russian Dialectology.
Moscow, 2002). The focus of the paper is a specific mechanism of sentence
accentuation which implies strengthening and elongation of consonantal
elements within a word while vocalic elements are subject to reduction.
This phenomenon noticed in Eastern Siberia was not traced in neither of
Russian “mainland” dialects and it is unlikely that it can be
internally motivated. Meanwhile I haven’t come across any reference that
could prove the existence of this mechanism in some of the neighboring
languages. Hence this problem requires further investigation with
employment of audio data from indigenous languages of the area.
A.Krasovitsky. Prosody of
Statements in the Speech of Old Settlers in the Polar Region
(in Russian). The paper was presented at the conference in honor of the
100th anniversary of R.I. Avanesov, February 14-15, 2002,
published in the “Book of Abstracts”, Moscow, MAKS-Press 2002. The
paper reviews archaic prosodic models in the language of Russkoye Ustye
(case 1). It focuses on statements with the rising tone in the end – a
phenomenon only occasionally noticed in some of the Russian dialects in
the European North. Contrary to the latter the language of Russkoye Ustye
preserved various types of rising tones in non-interrogative sentences and
their distribution considering semantics of statements. The origin of
these prosodic models is not clear but Finno-Ugric substratum may not be
excluded taking into account geolinguistic data.
Alexander
Krasovitsky and Christian Sappok. Russkoye Ustye. A collection of texts with
linguistic commentaries. Book + audio CD. Bochum - Moskva 2004
(Bulletin
des Phonetischen Fonds,
Supplementband 14, http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/LiLab/www-bff/Index.html)
