Is contact-induced syncretism possible? A corpus-based study on bilingual verbal morphology of spoken German in Russian Siberia

This paper investigates bilingual verbs in a corpus of spoken German by L1 speakers in Russian Siberia. The study analyzes bilingual verb formations of the type hinpostupaje, which are inserted into a position corresponding to a native verb. Different kinds of inﬂectional and word-formation patterns in bilingual verbs are identiﬁed and discussed with reference to the contact-induced morphology of German and Russian. The study demonstrates that the bilingual verbs follow morphophonemic regularities, and that there are several traces of morphophonemic syncretism. It argues that the bilingual speakers make use of German and Russian morphology in an innovative way, which cannot be explained by classical morphology alone. The bilingual formatives identiﬁed differ from the form/function equivalents in both German and Russian morphology. Further research should therefore include cognitive aspects of bilingual morphology.

Keywords

bilingualism, corpus linguistics, dialectology, diaspora, German, island dialects, language contact, mixed languages, morphology, Natural Morphology, Russia, Russian, syncretism, verbal inﬂection

Acknowledgment

I wish to thank Nadezhda Zorikhina Nilsson (professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Stockholm) for her valuable feedback concerning Russian morphology and two anonymous reviewers for valuable advices.

Received

18.12.2019

Publication date

20.12.2019

Number of characters

48516

Cite

GOST	Andersen C. Is contact-induced syncretism possible? A corpus-based study on bilingual verbal morphology of spoken German in Russian Siberia // Voprosy Jazykoznanija – 2019. – Issue 6 C. 94-112 [Electronic resource]. URL: http://ras.jes.su/vopjaz/s0373658x0007548-1-1-en (circulation date: 26.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S0373658X0007548-1
MLA	Andersen, Christiane "Is contact-induced syncretism possible? A corpus-based study on bilingual verbal morphology of spoken German in Russian Siberia." Voprosy Jazykoznanija 6 (2019):94-112. DOI: 10.31857/S0373658X0007548-1
APA	Andersen C. (2019). Is contact-induced syncretism possible? A corpus-based study on bilingual verbal morphology of spoken German in Russian Siberia. Voprosy Jazykoznanija (6), pp.94-112 DOI: 10.31857/S0373658X0007548-1

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