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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. 315–344

Analyzing Modern Chinese Pidgin Russian

Variability and the feature pool theory

| Russian Academy of Sciences

The article is devoted to the analysis of specific varieties of Russian used by older Udihe and Nanai in the Primorsky and Khabarovsky territories. These codes are characterized by a high level of variability. It is shown that these are contemporary varieties of Chinese Pidgin Russian (ChPR), which was a means of communication between Russians and the local indigenous population before the 1960s. Invariable forms similar to pidgin are in free variation with inflected Russian forms. I argue that a stabilized pidgin or a creole may show no supervariability, with Tok-Pisin being an example. Stabilized Pidgins and Creoles are no more variable than languages with an ordinary history of formation. Thus, Chinese Pidgin Russian shows significant stability: different sources display similar or very close variants (for details, see Perekhvalskaya, 2008, 2013). This paper is a case study analysis of variability in modern forms of Chinese Pidgin Russian spoken in the Ussuri region of Russia: it presents linguistic processes occurring lately in the Chinese Pidgin Russian. In the course of its history, this variety underwent a stage of a relative stability followed by a more variable post-pidgin stage. The latter will be thoroughly analyzed in this paper. The Ussuri region is the territory annexed by Russia under the Aygun peace treaty in 1858–1860. It is bounded by the Amur river in the North, by the Ussuri and Vaku (after 1972 Malinovka) rivers in the West, and by the Sea of Japan in the East.

Keywords: Russian-based pidgins, variation, Udihe, language shift, pidgins and interlanguage
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Russian-based pidgins in the Russian Far East
    • 1.2Data
  • 2.Russians and Chinese in the Ussuri region: Two directions of language shift
    • 2.1Russians: Waves of migration
    • 2.2Chinese Pidgin Russian
    • 2.3Post-pidgin situation in the Ussuri region
  • 3.Analysis of linguistic data
    • 3.1No inflectional morphology
      • 3.1.1Verbs
      • 3.1.2Nouns
    • 3.2Plurality
    • 3.3Generalized forms for personal and possessive pronouns
    • 3.4Formal differentiation of word classes
    • 3.5Preferred word order is SOV
    • 3.6Absence of complex sentences, coordinative, and subordinative conjunctions
    • 3.7Absence of prepositions
    • 3.8Limited lexicon: Words have very broad semantics
    • 3.9The expression of the TAMP with postpositional markers
    • 3.10The use of the particle la / le
    • 3.11Pidgin feature not characteristic for post-Pidgin varieties
  • 4.Pidgin and interlanguage
    • 4.1Bargaining and finding a common code strategy
    • 4.2The strategy of “trying synonyms”
    • 4.3Echoing
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • Chinese Pidgin Russian speakers
  • Literary sources of Chinese Pidgin Russian examples
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.50.11per
References

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AnP – Antonina Pionka
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AP – Alexandr Pionka “Mayor”
1921: Krasny Jar (Bikin Udihe)Google Scholar
DzK – Dzakpani Kanchuga
ca. 1915: Krasny Jar (Bikin Udihe)Google Scholar
LYCh – Liu Yuan Chin,“uncle Van’a”
ca. 1920: Kukan, Jewish Autonomous Area (Chinese)Google Scholar
NM – Nadežda Martynova
ca. 1910: Krasny Jar (Bikin Udihe)Google Scholar
TK – Tatiana Kaza
1930: Agzu (Samarga Udihe).Google Scholar
VU – Valentina Utaisin, “baba Val’a”
1910: Mikhailovka (Tazovka).Google Scholar
VT – Viktor Tarasenko
1954 : Kukan, Jewish Autonomous Area (Ukranian)Google Scholar

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