Lexical Borrowing And Cross-Cultural Communication

Abstract

The particular nature of the language contacts across the Udmurt republic is considered in the article. Within ethnically non-homogenous territories the language contacts inevitably result in lexical borrowings or loan words. The present state of the languages in the Udmurt republic allows to differentiate several forms of loan translation. In this view Russian acts as an indigenous language while the Udmurt as well as Tartar languages function as receiving or target languages. An important aspect of this problem is the loans status. Turkisms among the loan words prevailing in the region make up 52.5% of all and udmurtisms or former native words of the Udmurt language – about 47.5% of them. Turkisms are loan words from the Tartar language (they all are given in the Russian transliteration). In the Udmurt republic speech communication is a leading source of borrowings. Immediate communication of Russian people with other nations living in the territory of the republic promotes borrowings mostly in oral use of the language. The language contacts present the interaction and mutual languages’ influence as a result of their simultaneous functioning in the society. Bilingualism and multilingualism greatly influence the word stock of the interacting languages. In the Udmurt republic there exist direct contacts between the languages belonging to different families – Indo-European Slavic languages (Russian), Turkic (Tartar) and Finno-Ugrian (Udmurt) languages.

Keywords: Community languageindigenous languageloan wordlexical borrowinglanguage contactstarget language

Introduction

The article is devoted to one of the most urgent problems of modern science of language - the interaction of the Russian literary language with other co-existing languages within the territory of the Russian Federation.

Cultures contacts

Any language as the means of communication is closely connected with the culture of the nation. Language contacts appear both upon people’s coming into contact with each other (Weinreich, 1979) and in the absence of it (Krysin, 2002; Volodarskaya, 2001), provided there exist some mediated cultures contacts. One of the ultimate outcomes of the interaction between cultures/ interculturality is linguistic borrowing which presents a certain phase or stage in the process of other nation’s cultural values adoption.

The Udmurt republic speech communication

In the Udmurt republic speech communication is a leading source of borrowings. Immediate communication of Russian people with other nations living in the territory of the republic promotes borrowings mostly in oral use of the language. The language contacts present the interaction and mutual languages’ influence as a result of their simultaneous functioning in the society. Bilingualism and multilingualism greatly influence the word stock of the interacting languages. In the Udmurt republic there exist direct contacts between the languages belonging to different families Indo-European Slavic languages (Russian), Turkic (Tartar) and Finno-Ugrian (Udmurt) languages. Language borrowing has become in the last decades a topical issue due to the fact that many different aspects of the language interaction have been developed (Hassan, 2018; Hamaidia, Methven, & Woodin, 2018; Peterson & Fagersten, 2018; Khraban 2016).

Problem Statement

Within ethnically non-homogenous territories the language contacts inevitably result in lexical borrowings or loan words. The present state of the languages in the Udmurt republic allows to differentiate several forms of loan translation. In this view Russian acts as an indigenous language while the Udmurt as well as Tartar languages function as receiving or target languages. An important aspect of this problem is the loans status. The language contacts present the interaction and mutual languages’ influence as a result of their simultaneous functioning in the society. Bilingualism and multilingualism greatly influence the word stock of the interacting languages.

The tasks of the research

The tasks of the research are as follows:

  • to study colloquial speech of the residents of Udmurtia-native language speakers in order to identify borrowings from the Tartar and Udmurt languages;

  • to make a classification of borrowings according to their genetic origin, areal limitation, connotative features, usage frequency and their stability;

  • to reveal social and ethnic background for borrowings in the Udmurtia.

Research Questions

However some inconsistencies in the interpretation schemes of the language borrowings arose. It can be accounted for an increasingly large number of the linguistic studies devoted to this issue. Conventional views on this problem were developed in the 19th century while newer concepts on the language processes and its structure appeared in the latter half of the 20th century.

The study of the processes and outcomes of lexical borrowings has been conducted in two different directions in the few last decades: some linguists focus on the internal aspect of a foreign lexical unit adoption by a target language (Bloomfield, 1933; Krysin, 2002) while the other group of linguists look into lexical borrowings in terms of bilingualism, language contacts and intersystem crossing of languages (Weinreich, 1979; Haugen, 1970).

Problem of borrowings

A widely held conventional conception of a loan word/ borrowing as a transfer or penetration of units from one language into the other is in opposition with another conception according to which a loan word or borrowing is considered as making language elements by the means inherent in this language system through imitation, rough replication or structural modeling in a manner similar to foreign patterns.

The first approach was formed in the 19th century and prevails at present. It is represented in many works of the Russian linguists (Belikov & Krysin, 2001; Potapova, 2014; Sanko & Kisarova, 2016) as well as in scientific literature, study materials and modern encyclopaedic literature.

In Linguistic Encyclopaedic Dictionary, a loan word or borrowing is considered as both “a foreign language element (a word, a morpheme, a syntactical structure, etc.) transferred from one language to another as a consequence of language contacts and the process of language elements transference itself” (Linguisticheskii ensiclopedicheskii slovar, 1990). We adhere to this conception as in the course of our study it was found that the Udmurt and Tartar words were adopted by the Russian language as a consequence of the language contacts of these three nations.

The opposite approach was formed in the areal linguistics and in the frameworks of it some certain bilingualism degree is considered to be a necessary borrowing condition. Weinreich (1972, p. 3) distinguished the following opportunities for borrowing process: 1. language contact (cultures or peoples contact), bilingualism, contacting peoples’ quantitative ratio; 2. comprehension level of both languages by bilinguals; 3. the functional role of both languages in bilinguals’ life, the status and prestige of nations’ contacting languages and cultures they represent; 4. evaluation and peoples’ attitude to bilingualism and multilingualism as well as to the interference which goes with this phenomenon.

The term “calquing or loan translation” applied to the translated units meant a replication or imitation of foreign patterns by a target language means. The similar explanation of lexical borrowings as a phonemic copying of a foreign pattern was proposed by Haugen (1972), although his lexical borrowings classification was based on the transference and substitution features or markings.

So, the concept of lexical borrowing as words transference from one language to another presupposes quite a long assimilation or adaptation of foreign or loan vocabulary to the target language structure. The latter gradually adjusts these foreign words to its norms (of the target language) and becomes a major criterion of loan words adjustment in the target language structure. This vocabulary being introduced into a new linguistic environment adjusts itself to the phonetic, morphological and grammatical structure of the target language. According to the assimilation degree this vocabulary can be divided into three groups: 1. completely assimilated into the target language (full linguistic” harmony” between lexical borrowings and the target language system owing to the phonetic, morphological and semantic assimilation); 2. partially assimilated; 3. non-assimilated or unassimilated.

In the Russian linguistics until the 1990-s particular attention was paid to the influence of the Soviet Union peoples’ language on the Russian language. This influence was considered in the lexical-semantic aspect (Bobrova, 1986; Dzhumalakov, 1989).

Exotisms represent the main manner of borrowings in these works whereas foreign words perform a nominative function.

In modern linguistics the foreign words influence on the Russian language is considered in broader sense than in the past decades of the 20-th century. “It (foreign influence) needs in-depth and detailed study regarding both easily noticed lexical borrowings and different forms of hidden Russian’s influence on the other languages – not only in the vocabulary but in word-formation, syntax, a prosodic pattern of an utterance and their communicative organization” (Krysin, 2002, p.34).

Borrowings or loan words are not just foreign language inclusions but they also change semantic links which existed until the foreign words adjustment (Volodarskaya, 2001).

At present the problem of borrowings received attention not only in the lexical-semantic but also in linguoculturological, sociolinguistic and communicative-pragmatic aspects (Marinova, 2014, Gvozduk, Volokitina, & Krasnova, 2015; Lartseva, 2014; Kazakova & Yurasova, 2015; Yaron, 2009; Grinëv, 2017; Сhernyavskaya, 2016).

The development of the ethnopolitical process as well as inter-ethnic relations in the Udmurt republic have been determined in the last decade by the following factors: multinational population composition, a small number of titular ethnic group (the Udmurts make up only 30.9% in the population in Udmurtia); long-standing stratification when the Udmurt population majority have been mostly involved in farming; long duration of conflict free co-residence of the Udmurts, the Tartars and the Russians.

In a multilingual society the language communicative functions are not performed equally by different languages. The state of the languages in the Udmurt republic indicates that the Russians compose the majority of citizens (58,9%). The distribution of the Russian, Udmurt and Tartar languages in education, social and cultural sphere as well as in a business sector is characterized by the Russian language domination. At the same time the development policy of the national languages in the area of education and mass media is encouraged.

The status of the Udmurt language across the republic is far inferior to the Russian language as it is used mostly in education, media resources and business communication spheres. Besides, assimilation process or a voluntary rejection of their native in favour of the Russian language is very typical of the Udmurt population among those who belong to urban residents. The reason for this phenomenon is the domination of the Russian-speaking population belonging to urban residents as well as a poor command of the native tongue among those Udmurts who are urban residents. All these factors considerably impede the bilingualism process in the Udmurt republic which is represented by the Russian and Udmurt languages because the Russian population is mostly monolingual. The language environment in the republic is complicated by the fact that standard Russian language interacting with the languages belonging to other language groups is under the negative influence of non-standard forms of the national language.

Purpose of the Study

The aim of the research is to study foreign words influence on the Russian language in the Udmurt republic and their language nature.

Research Methods

Methods applied in the research are the following: descriptive (material compilation, its processing, interpretation and generalization), sociolinguistic (observational technique, questionnaire survey, interviewing, experiment),comparative method (correlation analysis) and some others.

Findings

The co-residence for centuries of the Russians, Udmurts and Tartars as well as regular language contacts resulted in lexical borrowings. All loan words are varied in form in terms of their structure and semantics and can be classified according to the following characteristics.

Borrowings classification

I. Borrowings classification

1. Assimilation degree by Russian as a target language

  • borrowings or loan words completely assimilated by the Russian language. The main feature of this vocabulary group is characterized by full linguistic harmony between lexical borrowings and the target language system owing to the phonetic, morphological and semantic assimilation. The word “kumyshka” illustrates this group.

  • partially assimilated vocabulary. This group comprises lexical units which have not been fully assimilated by the target language yet and they are still regarded as foreign words: italmas,balish,chak-chak.

  • non-assimilated or unassimilated borrowings. This group of words is characterized by restricted use the population and can be found mostly deep in the countryside and they are likely eventually to become extinct, such lexical units as jol, nyan, tabani, katyk, echpochmak, makmyr, babai, abika, apa, malaika, sabantui, inmar, uraza, krez, valamon, chertkem.

2. Genetic origin of the borrowings

60% of all ethnic community language trace their origin to Turkisms and 40% - to Udmurt words or Udmurtisms which can be justified by both extralinguistic and intralinguistic reasons. The major part of the Russians and Tartars are city inhabitants while the Udmurt population is mostly located in the countryside. The Russians compose more than 70% of all urban population which indicates that the Russian language is insignificantly influenced by foreign words. Turkisms in terms of linguistics belong to long-standing vocabulary in the region. Moreover, the most part of Turkisms is represented by a group of the name units according to their genetic affinity as the Tartar culture is distinguished by more fractural kin relationships.

3. Functions

The ethnic community language mentioned above performs the following functions: nominative, connotative, rhetorical (strengthening of the phatic function of the language, emphasizing of goodwill, interlocutors’ equal positions, the addressee selective screening, emphasizing of response modality, easing of communication act, etc.) as well as vocative induction function.

4. Loan words aspect (pattern structure)

In terms of the structure of loan words we can distinguish exotisms (balish, echpochmak, katyk, chak-chak, abika, babai, apa, malaika, sabantui, uraza, perepechi, tabani, inmar), barbarisms (valamon, chertkem, zechbur); as well as some Russian words with the loaned morphemes (kolotu-babai, koshmarjos).

5. Loan words status

The transregional vocabulary is common for two or more regions and is used in the Russian language, provided it is spoken in these regions.

The examples of this vocabulary are: “uraza”, “sabantui”.

The community language is composed of lexical units which are used in the Russian language by the Privolzhsky Federal District republics. Among them are: abika, babai, apa, malaika, balish, belyashi, katyk, chak-chak, echpochmak.

Regionalisms or regional words used in the Russian language across the Udmurt republic can be illustrated by the following lexical units: perepechi, italmas, tabani, jol, nyan, valamon, chertkem, zechbur, inmar, krez, cheberistyi, koshmarjos, kolotu-babai.

II. Main reasons for foreign words usage (the Udmurtisms, Turkisms) by Izhevsk natives

1. Need for the item names lacking in the Russian culture.

2. The rhetorical language goal of the loan words having appropriate. Russian equivalents, namely: to create a certain intercourse atmosphere or to come into contact with somebody, attract somebody’s attention, enhance the evaluativity of the utterance, emphasize response modality, strengthen the phatic function of the language, simulate the language game, etc.

Some of the loan words possess a pragmatic target as they are able to act on people’s thoughts, emotions, will and behavior.

3. Borrowing from other languages takes place on the principle of increasing diminishment as well as a negative connotation. What is more, this loan word may have a neutral connotation in the receiving or target language.

III. Factors affecting borrowing

  • Clashing with a Russian equivalent which is an integral part of the vocabulary and has a sufficient frequency of usage.

  • Assimilation difficulties because of the phonetic, morphological and grammar differencies between the languages.

Traditionally the main condition for borrowing is a language contact between a source language and a target language and consequently bilingualism of speakers.

In our study the Russian language acts as a target language while the Udmurt and Tartar are the source languages.

A consequence of mutual influence of the language structures in contact

Not least important is the fact that the community using the target language is willing to adopt these foreign words.

Borrowing can be regarded as a consequence of mutual influence of the language structures in contact, the language contact length being significant in this case.

The city of Izhevsk emerged as a Russian settlement, however in the latter half of the 19-th century and particularly in the early 20-th century the influx of the Tartar population from the present-day Tartar republic began. This resulted in the fact that Izhevsk received the status of the Russian-Tartar settlement. The influx of the Udmurt population started only in the in the early 20-th century. The proportion of urban population among the Udmurts steadily increased (compare 2.3% of the Udmurts in Izhevsk population in 1926 and 17.2% - in 2010). This all indicates that Izhevsk gradually turned into the Russian-Tartar-Udmurt town. On arriving in Izhevsk the Udmurt population settled in a new area discretely while the Tartar population concentrated mainly in a certain area of the city (Zareka). This resulted in the connections deprival among the Udmurt population. Moreover, the Udmurt population melted into local population (the Russians) and they felt embarrassed of their belonging to this nationality. The younger Udmurt population mostly prefered the Russian language socializing with others and becoming unmindful of their mother tongue.

Conclusion

The usage of borrowings from the Udmurt and Tartar languages in Russian can be caused by either communication goal in the society (naming some specific phenomenon or national household articles) or rhetorical tasks like creating elements of language game, easing the tension etc.

In terms of their genetic origin all regional vocabulary can be divided into borrowings from the Udmurt and Tartar languages. While scrutinizing all ethnic regional borrowings used in the society across the Udmurt republic we distinguished regional words used with high frequency, regional words with low frequency as well as contextual regional words and passive regional words. To sum up the research has shown that the influence of loan words in general in the Udmurt republic can be found inconsiderable in terms of linguistic and nonlinguistic factors.

References

  1. Belikov, V. I., & Krysin, L. P. (2001). Sociolingvistika [Sociolingvistics]. Moskow: Ros. gos. gumanit.univ-t.
  2. Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
  3. Bobrova, T.A. (1986). O leksicheskom vzaimodeistvii russkogo i turkmenskogo yazykov. [On the lexical interaction of the Russian and Turkmen languages]. Russkii yazyk v shkole [Russian language at school], 2, 108-110. [In Rus.]
  4. Сhernyavskaya, V. (2016). Cultural Diversity in Knowledge Dissemination: Linguo-Cultural Approach SGEM 3rd. International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts. 2016. Conference proceedings, 2, 443-450. DOI: 10.5593/SGEMSOCIAL2016/HB31/S03.057
  5. Dzhumalakov, A. (1989). O turkmenskoi leksike v russkoyazychnom khudozhestvennom tekste. [On the Turkmen lexicon in the Russian-language artistic text]. Russkii yazyk v shkole, 2, 92-96. [In Rus.]
  6. Gvozduk, V. N., Volokitina, T. I., & Krasnova, N. M. (2015). K voprosu o zaimstvovaniyakh [On the issue of borrowing]. Novaya nauka: Strategii i vektory razvitiya [New Science: Strategies and Vectors of Development, 3, 58-61. [In Rus.]
  7. Grinëv, A. (2017). The problem of citation in the humanities  Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Vol.87 No.1, 83-86 DOI: 10.1134/S1019331616060101
  8. Hamaidia, L., Methven, S., & Woodin, J. (2018). Translation spaces Parallel shifts in translation and intercultural communication studies and their significance for the international development field. Translation spaces, 7, 1, 119-142.
  9. Hassan, D. (2018). Multilingvism in literature: A socio-pragmatic, reading of Leila Aboulela‘s The Translator (1999) and Ahdaf Soueif‘s The Map of Love (1999). Multilingua – journal of cross-cultural and interlanguage communication, 37. 5, 515-534. DOI: 10.1515/multi-2017-0005
  10. Haugen, E. (1970). Bilingualism, Language Contact, and Immigrant Languages in the United States: a Research Report 1956-1970. Current Trends in Linguistics, 10, 505-590.
  11. Haugen, E. (1972). Yazykovoi kontakt.[Language contact]. In Novoye v lingvistike [New in linguistics], 6 (pp. 125-140). Moscow: Nauka. [In Rus.]
  12. Kazakova, E.V., & Yurasova, N.K. (2015). K voprosu o zaimstvovaniyakh v russkom yazyke [On the issue of borrowing in Russian]. In E.V. Nikolaeva (Ed.) Inostrannyi yazyk v diskurse mody: obrazovatelnye tekhnologii i lingvokulturnye issledovaniya [Foreign Language in Fashion Discourse: Educational Technologies and Linguocultural Studies]. (pp 85-92). Moscow: Moscow State University of Design and Technology. [In Rus.]
  13. Khraban, T.E. (2016). Leksicheskoye zaimstvovaniye kak rezultat mezhkulturnoi i mezhyazykovoi kommunikatsii [Lexical borrowing as a result of intercultural and interlanguage communication.]. Uchenye zapiski UO VGU im. P.M.Masherova [Scientific notes UO VSU after. P.M.Masherova], 21, 138-143. [In Rus.]
  14. Krysin, L.P. (2002). Leksicheskoye zaimstvovaniye i kalkirovaniye v russkom yazyke poslednikh desyatiletii [Lexical borrowing and tracing in the Russian language of the last decades.]. Voprosy yazykoznaniya [Issues of linguistics], 3, 27-35. [In Rus.]
  15. Lartseva, E.V. (2014). Problema mezhvariantnogo zaimstvovaniya v svete obshchei teorii zaimstvovaniya. [The problem of inter-variant borrowing in the light of the general theory of borrowing]. Aktualnye problem germanistiki, romanistiki i russistiki [Actual problem of Germanism, Romance and Russian Studies], 1, 47-51. [In Rus.]
  16. Lingvisticheskii entsiklopedicheskii slovar [Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary]. (1990). Moscow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya. [In Rus.]
  17. Marinova, V.E. (2014). “Vechnyi vopros” o zaimstvovaniyakh [“The eternal question” about borrowing]. Russkaya rech [Russian speech], 3, 58- 61. [In Rus.]
  18. Peterson, E., & Fagersten, K. B. (2018). Introduction to the special issue: Linguistic and pragmatic outcomes of contact with English. Journal of fragmatics. 133, 105-108
  19. Potapova, G. A. (2014). Zaimstvovaniye kak yazykovoi protsess v sovremennom russkom yazyke [Borrowing as a language process in modern Russian]. In A.S. Shcherbak (Ed.), Ecologiya yazyka i rechi: Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii. (pp. 62-66). Tambov State University after G. R. Derzhavin. [In Rus.]
  20. Sanko, E. V., & Kisarova, E.G. (2016). Zaimstvovaniye na sovremennom etape razvitiya russkogo yazyka. [Borrowing at the present stage of development of the Russian language]. Filologicheskiye nauki. Voprosy teorii i praktiki [Philology. Theory and practice], 4- 1(58), 152-154. [In Rus.]
  21. Volodarskaya, E.F. (2001). Zaimstvovaniye kak universalnoye lingvisticheskoye yavleniye [Borrowing as a universal linguistic phenomenon]. Voprosy filologii [Philology issues], 1 (7), 11-28. [In Rus.]
  22. Weinreich, U. (1972). Odnoyazychie i mnogoyazychie. O sovmestimosti genealogicheskogo rodstva i konvergentnogo razvitiya [Monolingual and multilingual. On the compatibility of genealogical kinship and convergent development], Novoye v lingvistike, 6, 125-140
  23. Weinreich, U. (1979). Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. New York.
  24. Yaron, M. (2009). Language Contact. Cambridge University Press.

Copyright information

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

About this article

Publication Date

30 December 2018

eBook ISBN

978-1-80296-050-1

Publisher

Future Academy

Volume

51

Print ISBN (optional)

-

Edition Number

1st Edition

Pages

1-2014

Subjects

Communication studies, educational equipment,educational technology, computer-aided learning (CAL), science, technology

Cite this article as:

Torokhova, E., & Litvinova, V. (2018). Lexical Borrowing And Cross-Cultural Communication. In V. Chernyavskaya, & H. Kuße (Eds.), Professional Сulture of the Specialist of the Future, vol 51. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 1519-1527). Future Academy. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2018.12.02.162