Kontaktilähtöinen kielenmuutos, substraatti ja substraattinimistö

• Janne Saarikivi

Abstrakti

Contact-induced linguistic change, linguistic substrate and substrate place names (englanti)

3/2000 (104)

Janne Saarikivi ([e-mail])

CONTACT-INDUCED LINGUISTIC CHANGE, LINGUISTIC SUBSTRATE AND SUBSTRATE PLACE NAMES

The article focuses on contact-induced linguistic change, using as an example Finno-Ugrian substrate features in North Russian dialects.

In contact linguistics and substrate research the practice has been to refer principally to the theory presented by Thomason and Kaufman (1988) and to distinguish a loan effect and a substrate effect, which influence the subsystems of the language in a different hierarchical manner. The loan effect is seen as affecting primarily the lexicon, and the substrate effect as affecting phonetics and morphosyntax. In practice, however, it is difficult to distinguish the morphosyntactical and phonetic innovations created by the effect of the substrate language from the language-internal development.

The writer considers the difficulties of verifying the contact effect using the material from northern Russia. Regarding the phonetic and morphosyntactical features, it is found that the substrate effect is easiest to prove for marked and typologically rare structures, which are, however, generally few. It is further stated that the substrate language effect may be reflected as a loss of markedness in the once marked structures of the L2 language; as a transfer to a more analytical manner of expression; or as a hypercorrect application of marked features lacking in the substrate language. In the case of the North Russian dialects, the substrate effect on phonetic and morphosyntactical features is often disputed, because Slavic or Indo-European parallels have been shown for these features. In contrast to what the Thomason and Kaufman theory would suggest, the writer proposes that, in verifying the substrate effect in North Russian, it is the lexicon and above all place names that are the key. Place names and the areal distribution of lexemes in the dialects provide a concrete historical background against which the proposed phonetic and morphosyntactical substrate features seem more probable than before.