Russian tipa renders two crosslinguistic trends of language change: the rise of ‘novel’ quotatives and type noun grammaticalization. The paper explores the quotative and quotative-linked uses of the particle tipa in informal student discourse. It supplies arguments concerning the question of tipa's genesis, i.e. whether tipa appeared owing to language contact or evolved autonomously. The paper displays the connection of the debated subuses proposing them as a multinucleate field structure.