Focusing on language contact involving Russian, and the linguistic varieties that emerged from that contact in different social settings, this book analyzes issues and methodologies in reconstructing both the linguistic effects of language contact and the social contexts of usage. In-depth analyses… read more
The former Soviet Union (USSR) provides the ideal territory for studying language contact between one and the same dominant language (Russian) and a wide range of genealogically and typologically diverse languages with varying histories of language contact. This is the first book that bundles… read more
Edited by Balthasar Bickel, Lenore A. Grenoble, David A. Peterson and Alan Timberlake
What is the range of diversity in linguistic types, what are the geographical distributions for the attested types, and what explanations, based on shared history or universals, can account for these distributions? This collection of articles by prominent scholars in typology seeks to address these… read more
Edited by Lenore A. Grenoble and N. Louanna Furbee
Language documentation, also often called documentary linguistics, is a relatively new subfield in linguistics which has emerged in part as a response to the pressing need for collecting, describing, and archiving material on the increasing number of endangered languages. The present book details… read more
The role deixis plays in structuring language and its relation to the context of utterance provides the focus for an examination of information packaging in Russian discourse. The analysis is based on a model which interprets discourse as constituted by four interrelated frameworks — the linguistic… read more
This is a response to the commentaries on our epistemological paper, The dynamics of bilingualism in language shift ecologies. The commentaries highlight the challenges in studying language shift ecologies and the competing goals of different research approaches. We hope this set of papers… read more
A large percentage of the world’s languages – anywhere from 50 to 90% – are currently spoken in what we call shift ecologies, situations of unstable bi- or multilingualism where speakers, and in particular younger speakers, do not use their ancestral language but rather speak the majority… read more
This paper surveys a broad range of languages in contact with Russian to provide an overview of a core set of similarities in the outcomes of contact-induced change. We consider both lexical and structural borrowings, focusing on five categories: adjectives, verbs, indefinite pronouns,… read more
Evenki, a Northwest Tungusic language, exhibits an extensive system of nominal cases, deictic terms, and relator nouns, used to signal complex spatial relations. The paper describes the use and distribution of the spatial cases which signal stative and dynamic relations, with special attention to… read more
This paper examines the use of co-constructions in spontaneous Russian conversations. Co-constructions are found when one speaker completes another speaker’s utterance, that is, a co-construction is a syntactic unit created within a single turn construction unit but by multiple speakers.… read more
This paper considers the changes in clause-combining structures as the Siberian Tungusic languages, represented here by Evenki, are undergoing shift due to contact with Russian. Native clause-combining strategies, specifically parataxis and subordination with converb forms, are being replaced by… read more
The last twenty years have witnessed an explosion of research on issues of language endangerment, with the emergence of documentary linguistics and the growth of language revitalization programs, resulting in changes in methodologies and in subfields within linguistics. The present article assesses… read more
Language documentation has emerged as a response to the pressing need for collecting, describing, and archiving material on the increasing number of endangered languages. This paper draws together issues raised throughout the volume as to the nature of documentation from every angle – from early… read more
A prime case study for exploring the potentially conflicting agendas of language documentation and revitalization is Evenki, a Tungusic language spoken by approximately 5000 people living in small villages scattered throughout much of Siberia. Historically the Evenki people were nomadic herders and… read more
