The late success of Soviet language policy: The integration of Russian verbs in languages of the former Soviet Union

Abstract

Purpose: This study examines the integration of Russian verbs into 50 languages from 12 different language families predominantly spoken in the former Soviet Union with respect to insertion strategies and input forms of Russian verbs. The aim is to test if there are statistically significant distributions between particular insertion strategies and grammatical, areal and sociolinguistic properties of the recipient languages. Methodology: This study applies the typological categories developed by Wohlgemuth for the classification of verbal borrowings by distinguishing three major insertion strategies. The donor language is kept constant (Russian). For every recipient language information on all instances of inserted verbs and data on word order, morphological type, language family and relevant social parameters have been gathered. Data and analysis: The linguistic data largely come from published sources. Frequency data on the distribution of the insertion strategies are quantitatively analyzed and tested for statistically significant correlations with sociolinguistic and typological parameters and areal location. The distributions are visualized by maps. Findings: There are no correlations between insertion strategies and extralinguistic parameters such as the general contact intensity. The two typological features (word order; morphological type) showed some correlations, and areality also plays a certain role. The main factor is the existence of productive insertion strategies within particular families or subbranches. Furthermore, the strategies show different degrees of flexibility with respect to the morphological form of the input and can be ordered along a hierarchy from more flexible (direct insertion) to not flexible at all (paradigm insertion). Originality: This is the first attempt to systematically compare the impact of Russian on languages with different genealogical affiliations, typological profiles and sociolinguistic conditions. Russian is an understudied donor language with a complex verbal morphology. This study is meant to undertake the first step towards a comprehensive study of Slavicization.