Language Contact in the Territory of the Former Soviet Union

Language Contact in the Territory of the Former Soviet Union
Author: Diana Forker
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902726001X

The former Soviet Union (USSR) provides the ideal territory for studying language contact between one and the same dominant language (Russian) and a wide range of genealogically and typologically diverse languages with varying histories of language contact. This is the first book that bundles different case studies and systematically investigates the impact of Russian at all linguistic levels, from the lexicon to the domains of grammar to discourse, and with varying types of outcomes such as relatively rapid language shift, structural changes in a relatively stable contact situation, pidginization and super variability at the post-pidgin stage. The volume appeals to linguists studying language contact and contact-induced language change from a broad range of perspectives, who want to gain insight into how one of the largest languages in the world influences other smaller languages, but also experts of mostly minority languages in the sphere of the former Soviet Union.

Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries

Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries
Author: Aneta Pavlenko
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1847690874

In the past two decades, post-Soviet countries have emerged as a contested linguistic space, where disagreements over language and education policies have led to demonstrations, military conflicts and even secession. This collection offers an up-to-date comparative analysis of language and education policies and practices in post-Soviet countries.

The Handbook of Language Contact

The Handbook of Language Contact
Author: Raymond Hickey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 800
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1119485061

The second edition of the definitive reference on contact studies and linguistic change—provides extensive new research and original case studies Language contact is a dynamic area of contemporary linguistic research that studies how language changes when speakers of different languages interact. Accessibly structured into three sections, The Handbook of Language Contact explores the role of contact studies within the field of linguistics, the value of contact studies for language change research, and the relevance of language contact for sociolinguistics. This authoritative volume presents original findings and fresh research directions from an international team of prominent experts. Thirty-seven specially-commissioned chapters cover a broad range of topics and case studies of contact from around the world. Now in its second edition, this valuable reference has been extensively updated with new chapters on topics including globalization, language acquisition, creolization, code-switching, and genetic classification. Fresh case studies examine Romance, Indo-European, African, Mayan, and many other languages in both the past and the present. Addressing the major issues in the field of language contact studies, this volume: Includes a representative sample of individual studies which re-evaluate the role of language contact in the broader context of language and society Offers 23 new chapters written by leading scholars Examines language contact in different societies, including many in Africa and Asia Provides a cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world The Handbook of Language Contact, Second Edition is an indispensable resource for researchers, scholars, and students involved in language contact, language variation and change, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and language theory.

The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia

The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia
Author: Edward Vajda
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2024-03-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3111378381

The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia: A Comprehensive Guide surveys the indigenous languages of Asia’s North Pacific Rim, Siberia, and adjacent portions of Inner Eurasia. It provides in-depth descriptions of every first-order family of this vast area, with special emphasis on family-internal subdivision and dialectal differentiation. Individual chapters trace the origins and expansion of the region’s widespread pastoral-based language groups as well as the microfamilies and isolates spoken by northern Asia’s surviving hunter-gatherers. Separate chapters cover sparsely recorded languages of early Inner Eurasia that defy precise classification and the various pidgins and creoles spread over the region. Other chapters investigate the typology of salient linguistic features of the area, including vowel harmony, noun inflection, verb indexing (also known as agreement), complex morphologies, and the syntax of complex predicates. Issues relating to genealogical ancestry, areal contact and language endangerment receive equal attention. With historical connections both to Eurasia’s pastoral-based empires as well as to ancient population movements into the Americas, the steppes, taiga forests, tundra and coastal fringes of northern Asia offer a complex and fascinating object of linguistic investigation.

Clause Linkage in the Languages of the Ob-Yenisei Area

Clause Linkage in the Languages of the Ob-Yenisei Area
Author: Anja Behnke
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2023
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004684778

The volume explores clause-linkage strategies from a cross-linguistic perspective with an emphasis on asyndetic constructions. The data-driven approaches focus on areal differences and similarities in using non-finite verb forms in complex sentences in languages situated in Central and Western Siberia.

Reconstructing Non-Standard Languages

Reconstructing Non-Standard Languages
Author: Lenore A. Grenoble
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2022-12-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027257345

Focusing on language contact involving Russian, and the linguistic varieties that emerged from that contact in different social settings, this book analyzes issues and methodologies in reconstructing both the linguistic effects of language contact and the social contexts of usage. In-depth analyses of Odessan Russian, a southern Russian contact variety with Yiddish and Ukrainian elements, and Russian lexifier pidgins illustrate the reconstruction process, which involves making the most of all available documentation, particularly literature and stereotypical descriptions. Historical sociolinguistics of this kind straddles the fields of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and contact; this book brings together the methods and theories of these areas to show how they can result in a rich reconstruction of linguistic and socially-conditioned variation. We reconstruct the circumstances and social settings that produced this variation, and demonstrate how to reconstruct which variants were used by different types of speakers under different circumstances, and what kinds of social identities they indexed.

Susceptibility vs. Resistance

Susceptibility vs. Resistance
Author: Nataliya Levkovych
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 311078551X

The topic of the volume is the contrast between borrowable categories and those which resist transfer. Resistance is illustrated for the unattested emergence of grammatical gender, the negligible impact of English and Spanish on the number category in Patagonian Welsh, the reluctance of replicas to borrow English but. MAT-borrowing does not imply the copying of rules as the Spanish function-words in the Chamorro irrealis show. Chamorro and Tetun Dili look similar on account of their contact-induced parallels. The languages of the former USSR have borrowed largely identical sets of conjunctions from Russian, Arabic, and Persian to converge in the domain of clause linkage. Resistance against and susceptibility to transfer call for further investigations to the benefit of language-contact theory.

FInnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen Band 46

FInnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen Band 46
Author: Cornelius Hasselblatt
Publisher: Helmut Buske Verlag
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2022-12-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3967692779

Originalia - Viviana Ballaera: Klasse(n) Geschmack! Kulinarischer Geschmack als Ausdruck sozialer Differenzierung in Helsinki - Anja Behnke: 'Clause chaining' im Ob-Jenissej Gebiet - Maria Brykina, Josefina Budzisch: If only Selkup had an optative ... (A corpus study of the lV-form in Selkup dialects) - Svetlana Edygarova: The Udmurt language between 1920 and 1950 - Ekaterina Georgieva: Syntactic correlates of (non-)finiteness in Udmurt - Beáta Wagner-Nagy, Susann Fischer: Word order in Selkup Diskussion und Kritik - Benjamin Schweitzer: Irmeli Hautamäki, Laura Piippo, Helena Sederholm (Hrsgg.): Avantgarde Suomessa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura 2021 (Tietolipas 267)

Language Policy in the Soviet Union

Language Policy in the Soviet Union
Author: L.A. Grenoble
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2006-04-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0306480832

Soviet language policy provides rich material for the study of the impact of policy on language use. Moreover, it offers a unique vantage point on the tie between language and culture. While linguists and ethnographers grapple with defining the relationship of language to culture, or of language and culture to identity, the Soviets knew that language is an integral and inalienable part of culture. The former Soviet Union provides an ideal case study for examining these relationships, in that it had one of the most deliberate language policies of any nation state. This is not to say that it was constant or well-conceived; in fact it was marked by contradictions, illogical decisions, and inconsistencies. Yet it represented a conscious effort on the part of the Communist leadership to shape both ethnic identity and national consciousness through language. As a totalitarian state, the USSR represents a country where language policy, however radical, could be implemented at the will of the government. Furthermore, measures (such as forced migrations) were undertaken that resulted in changing population demographics, having a direct impact on what is a central issue here: the very nature of the Soviet population. That said, it is important to keep in mind that in the Soviet Union there was a difference between stated policy and actual practice. There was no guarantee that any given policy would be implemented, even when it had been officially legislated.