Evidence of syntactic convergence among Russian–Sakha bilinguals
This paper illustrates the implementation of two basic experiments to test word order changes in Russian and Sakha, languages in long–standing contact. We hypothesize that changes in word order may correlate with deeper structural changes and la nguage shift. The experiments show that some speakers...
| Published in: | Suvremena lingvistika |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Crotian Philological Society
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hrcak.srce.hr/223084 https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/325484 |
| Summary: | This paper illustrates the implementation of two basic experiments to test word order changes in Russian and Sakha, languages in long–standing contact. We hypothesize that changes in word order may correlate with deeper structural changes and la nguage shift. The experiments show that some speakers are shifting from Sakha to Russian: 4 from a sample of 30 speakers could not produce texts in Sakha, and one third of the sample produced sentences with some errors. At the same time, there were a significant number of mistakes in the Russian production experiments, indicating interference from Sakha and/or imperfect learning. A sociolinguistic questionnaire showed a high level of accuracy between speakers’ self–assessment of their proficiency in each of the target languages as measured by the experiments shown here. Moreover, the simple experiments themselves revealed a number of other production errors and proved to be a reasonable indicator of less than fluent proficiency and of at least the initial stages of language shift. Članak pokazuje primjenu dvaju osnovnih testova za provjeru promjena u poretku riječi u dvama jezicima u dugogodišnjemu kontaktu: u ruskome jeziku i u jeziku sakha (ili jakutskom). Pretpostavka je da promjene u poretku riječi mogu biti povezane s dubljim strukturnim promjenama i gubitkom jezika. Istraživanja pokazuju da neki govornici prestaju rabiti jezik sakha jer govore ruski: u skupini od 30 govornika četvero ih ne može proizvesti tekst na jeziku sakha, dok je trećina ispitanika proizvela rečenice s pogreškama. Istodobno, u proizvodnji tekstova na ruskome također je zabilježen znatan broj pogrešaka koje su odražavale interferencije s drugim jezikom (sakha) ili su posljedica loše usvojenoga jezika. Sociolingvistički je upitnik pokazao visoku razinu podudarnosti između samoprocjene jezične kompetencije govornika u svakome od proučavanih jezika i rezultata naših mjerenja. Štoviše, i vrlo jednostavne provjere kompetencije pokazale su stanovit broj ostalih vrsta pogrešaka te dokazale da su pouzdan pokazatelj sve slabije tečnosti u govoru kao i neupitno početne faze gubitka jezika. |
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