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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 482

Part of Session 134: Multilingual written internet data in language contact studies (Other abstracts in this session)

Applying Code-Copying Framework to Estonian-Russian language contacts in blogs

Authors: Verschik, Anna
Submitted by: Verschik, Anna (Tallinn University, Estonia)

The paper attempts to explain Estonian impact in Russian-language blogs with Code-Copying Framework (CCF, Johanson 2002). Russian-speakers in Estonia are becoming increasingly bilingual since the restoration of Estonia’s independence in 1991. Both languages are rich in inflectional morphology, which makes application of various contact linguistic models potentially useful for theory development. CCF describes all kinds of contact phenomena (lexicon, morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics) within a single terminological framework. The process behind contact-induced innovation is copying. A linguistic item has four types of properties: material, semantic, combinational, frequential. If all four are copied, the result is a global copy (code-switching, borrowing); if only some are copied, a result is a selective copy (changes in morphosyntax, meaning, combinability). In multi-word items (compounds, analytic forms) mixed copying occurs when some components are copied globally and some selectively (Estonian pähe õppima ’learn by heart’ > Russian učit´ pähe). Mixed copies are usually overlooked in other language contact models, yet oftentimes lexical innovations such as code-switching cannot be separated from morphosyntactic changes (Backus 2005).

A corpus of 201 Russian-language blog entries (63470 words) from 3 users (2008 until present) yields 422 global, 27 selective and 47 mixed copies. While the prevalence of global copies (overt Estonian-language items) is expectable, the low number of selective copies in all three users requires an explanation. Code alternations (stretches of monolingual Estonian) were disregarded because of their limited relevance for CCF. One explanation could be that there is little structural change in local Russian but in the light of the studies on oral data (Verschik 2008) this is unlikely. Another explanation is that this has to do with the genre of blog (less spontaneous than oral speech and real-time CMC genres). There are more mixed copies than selective copies and, compared to what has been attested in oral data, these are more diverse in their structure; an outline of possible typology of mixed copies will presented.

Graphic properties (present in blogs but absent in oral speech) can be included into CCF. Difference in script (Russian = Cyrillic, Estonian = Roman) and choice thereof sheds additional light on bloggers’ language awareness, for instance, Estonian noun stems  in Roman and Russian case markers in Cyrillic. Mixed copies can be rendered entirely in Cyrillic script but use of Roman script for the Estonian components illustrates (оставили läbivaatamata ’dismissed’). However, choice of Cyrillic is not equal to an item’s conventionalization in local Russian but is rather a matter of convenience and personal preferences.

Backus, Ad (2005) “Codeswitching and language change: One thing leads to another?” International Journal of Bilingualism 9 (3/4), 307-40.

Johanson, Lars (2002) Contact-induced linguistic change in a code-copying framework. In M. C. Jones and E. Esch (eds.), Language Change: The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-linguistic Factors. (Contributions to the Sociology of Language, 86). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 285–313.

Verschik, Anna (2008) Emerging Bilingual Speech: from Monolingualism to Code-copying. London: Continuum.