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Language Contact in the Territory of the Former Soviet Union
Edited by Diana Forker and Lenore A. Grenoble
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 50] 2021
► pp. 85–118

Enets-Russian language contact

| Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences

This paper explores the topic of Enets-Russian language contact from two perspectives: via a thorough description of sociolinguistic details of the contact (based on sociolinguistic interviews performed by the author in 2017, complemented by ethnographic data from the 1920s–1940s) and via an overview of its linguistic consequences for the lexicon, phonology, syntax, and discourse structures of Enets (based on an extensive corpus of Enets speech). All consecutive stages of Enets-Russian interaction are described: very limited contacts with Russian (before the end of the 1930s), start of the russification campaign (1940s–1950s), a transitional period (1960s), and the victory of Russian (from the 1970s onwards). Then all known instances of linguistic traces of this interaction for Enets are summarized. They represent both instances of negative borrowing (loss of phonotactic restrictions in phonology, reduced frequency of complex structures in subordination) and positive borrowing (loanwords, new phonemes, reduction as added phonetic realizations of some vowel phonemes, clause-combining strategies involving Russian conjunctions). Overall, the linguistic changes that Enets has undergone under the influence of Russian are not numerous, in particular if the lexicon is set aside, and this is explained by the very limited duration of the transition period, when both languages were in active use by the same individuals.

Keywords: language contact, Enets, Russian, historical sociolinguistics, borrowing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Language and its speakers
    • 1.2Data and methods
  • 2.Sociolinguistic details of the Enets-Russian language contact
    • 2.1Before the end of the 1930s: Very limited contacts with Russian
    • 2.2The 1940s–1950s: Start of the russification campaign
    • 2.3The 1960s: The transition period
    • 2.4The 1970s: The victory of Russian
    • 2.5Summarizing the history of the Enets-Russian language contact
  • 3.Linguistic traces of Enets-Russian contact in Enets
    • 3.1Lexicon
      • 3.1.1Old vs. recent loanwords
      • 3.1.2Content vs. functional loanwords
    • 3.2Phonetics and phonology
    • 3.3Syntax
    • 3.4Discourse
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.50.04kha
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