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Part of
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. 183–216

Russian influence on Surgut Khanty and Estonian aspect is limited but similar

 | Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics
 | Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary
In the present paper, we investigate evidence for a causal link between the sociolinguistic contact type and the type of structural change in borrowing. We build our argument via a comparative and contrastive study of the aspectual system of Surgut Khanty (Ob-Ugric, Uralic), Estonian (Finnic, Uralic) and Russian (Slavic, Indo-European). We relate our findings to earlier findings on the functional similarity of typologically distant languages in slight borrowing situations. Comparing the category of aspect in two Uralic languages, Estonian and Surgut Khanty, we claim that the structural changes in Estonian and Surgut Khanty are similar in the domain of aspect, despite the differences in the social conditions of contacts with Russian and additional influences from typologically diverging contact languages. We attribute the similarity to the low intensity of borrowing.
Keywords: pattern borrowing, aspect, Aktionsart, Surgut Khanty, Estonian, partitive, frequentative, iterative, imperfective, perfective
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sociolinguistic conditions
  • 3.Causal relations between borrowing type and structural change
  • 4.Key terminology
  • 5.Aspect and Aktionsart: Areal features?
  • 6.The Estonian aspectual structure
    • 6.1The Estonian aspectual structure: Object case alternation
    • 6.2The Estonian aspectual structure: Aktionsart particles
    • 6.3The Estonian aspectual structure: Aktionsart suffixes
    • 6.4The Estonian aspectual structure: Verbal complexes
    • 6.5Secondary imperfectives
    • 6.6Interim summary: The expression of aspectuality in Estonian
    • 6.7Comparisons
  • 7.Surgut Khanty
    • 7.1Methods
    • 7.2The system
    • 7.3Absence and presence of interference-phenomena in Surgut Khanty
    • 7.4Khanty and Russian: Comparison
  • 8.Discussion of the findings
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviatons
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.50.07gug
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