Anglicisms in a near-extinct Doukhobor Russian language in Canada
Veronika Makarova, Department of Linguistics, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Selected symposium: Open call – 3) minority languages
Presentation language: English
Short abstract in English (15 lines) (if presentation not in English) N/A
This presentation introduces distinctive layers of Doukhobor Russian (DR) vocabulary with a focus on loan words from English (anglicisms). Doukhobor vocabulary has remained unexamined so far, except for some studies of the DR ritual style (Schaarschmidt, 2008, 2012). Doukhobors (Doukhobortsy or Spirit Wrestlers) are a religious, linguistic and cultural minority group who immigrated to Canada from Russia in 1899 (Tarasoff, 1984; Makarova, 2019). Doukhobor Russian language needed to develop new vocabulary to reflect the realia of life in a new host country as well as the outcomes of technological and social development in the early 20th century. Due to the contact of DR with the majority English language in Western Canada, dozens of words were borrowed from English into DR and restructured phonologically and morphologically.
The reported study is based on 18 hours of audio-records of 20 speakers of Doukhobor Russian collected by the author between 2012 and 2018. The transcripts of the records with a total vocabulary of about 50,000 words were manually analyzed to select foreignisms and loan words from English (anglicisms) and illustrate the patterns of morphological and phonological restructuring of anglicisms. The theoretical approach to the analysis of vocabulary in DR resulting from language contact draws on the concept of lexifier in creolistics (e.g., Michaelis, 2008; Selbach, 2008). The results demonstrate that of a total number of 926 words of foreign origin (foreignisms) in the sample, only 445 (48%) were of English origin, and the rest came from other languages during the time preceding the Doukhobor move to Canada or through their contact with the mainland Standard Russian in the 20th century. The presentation outlines major morpho-syntactic and semantic groups of anglicisms in Doukhobor Russian and concludes with the perspectives for the language maintenance in the community.
References
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