УДК 811.511.132'373.613:811.161.1
BORROWABILITY OF FUNCTION AND DISCOURSE WORDS: THE KOMI CASE*
MARJA LEINONEN
University of Helsinki marja.leinonen@kolumbus.fi
The paper is concerned with the implicational scales for borrowed discourse words presented by Yaron Matras. The implications are checked for Komi and Russian, and found for the most correct.
Keywords: borrowability of discourse words, implications, Komi, Russian
ЛЕЙНОНЕН, МАРЬЯ. ВОЗМОЖНОСТЬ ЗАИМСТВОВАНИЯ ФУНКЦИОНАЛЬНЫХ И ДИСКУРСИВНЫХ СЛОВ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ КОМИ ЯЗЫКА)
Статья посвящена выяснению закономерностей заимствования функциональных и дискурсивных слов из русского языка в коми. Исследование проводится на основе теоретических построений Я.Матраса, который собрал данные из разных языков, находящихся в ситуации контакта с другими языками, и на этом материале предложил ряд импликаций, отражающих последовательность проникновения иноязычных элементов в условиях дискурса. Согласно этой теории, заимствование языковых единиц подчиняется определенному порядку: согласные звуки усваиваются в языке-реципиенте раньше гласных; выражение периферийных локальных отношений заимствуется раньше выражения ядерных локальных отношений; существительные заимствуются легче, чем глаголы и т.д. Я. Матрас объясняет такой порядок заимствования определенными психологическими факторами, которые воздействуют на говорящих в разных логических или прагматически сложных ситуациях. Коми язык сохраняет свою исконную грамматическую структуру и базовый словарь, однако в течение сотен лет он заимствовал из русского языка как отдельные лексические элементы, так и образцы прагматических структур, типы построения контекста, способы организации дискурсивных конструкций с калькированием и заимствованием отдельных элементов. Проведенное исследование показало, что закономерности проникновения русских дискурсивных единиц в коми язык, в целом, не противоречат выдвинутым Матрасом предположениям. Вопрос о психологической основе этих импликаций представляется более сложным и пока не может быть окончательно разрешен.
Ключевые слова: заимствование дискурсивных слов, импликации, коми, русский
1. Implicational scales of borrowability
The best-known language contact hierarchy for a time was that by Thomason & Kaufmann [1], renewed to some extent by Thomason («moderate structural borrowing» in syntax of coordination and subordination) [2, p. 70; 3]. For the topic, see [4]. Here, very specific recent suggestions for such a hierarchy by Yaron Matras will be applied to Komi.
On the basis of 25 languages from different parts of the world, Matras [5] has put together a hierarchy of borrowings on various levels and categories of language, including functional categories. Matras specializes
* Paper read at the conference «Language contacts: the state of the art», Helsinki, 28-30.8.14
in Romani variants from different parts of the world, which serve as a basis for his implicational hierarchies. Several publications by Matras [5, 6] contain extensive suggestions of psychological motivations for the borrowings in question, which I shall quote to some extent, without comment. That I shall leave to those who are bilingual.
Below, the source of lexical borrowing in Komi is Russian.
2. The implicational borrowability scales of Matras [5], applied to Komi
The scales are to be read as an implicational borrowing hierarchy, i.e. the item on the right is only borrowed if the item on the left is also borrowed. A question
mark means that the relevant information for Komi is not available, or not known to me.
1. Adoption of new consonants > adoption of new vowels:
in Komi, only consonants /f/, /c/, /x/, borrowed together with loan words.
2. Prosodic features > segmental phonological features:
- ? (no information).
3. Phonological features in loanwords > independent phonological features:
self-evident, see 1. Besides, Russian influence has produced new phonotactic rules.
Movement between morphological types: (poly-synthetic > less so > agglutinative > more isolating, agglutinative > more analytic).
Komi: co- and subordinate sentences appear instead of morphological means (dvandva aja-pia; ge-rundials) - more isolating.
4. Peripheral local relations > core local relations:
one adposition is a loan: bok- «side», no borrowing for core local relations. Preposition na
adopted in phrasemes only: ki na ki «hand in hand». In this group, Matras includes diminutive derivation. Komi has borrowed several Russian diminutive and other suffixes (KJaE).
5. Modals: obligation > necessity > possibility > ability > desire (volition):
Komi: dolzon / dolzen, ob'azan, vynuzden > byf > none > none > okota /okofitny.
6. Mood and modality > aspect / aktionsart > future tense > (other tenses).
Komi: future tense with a separate verb. In aspect and aktionsart matter replication as well as shared patterns. In Komi: -nit, a derivative suffix. Voice and valency are pattern-oriented, with in-
creased frequency of an existing option. In Komi: passives based on the reflexive marker with instrumental agent are modeled on the Russian passive construction.
7. Nouns > verbs.
Komi: nouns preponderate.
8. Numerals: over 10 > below 10.
Komi: this is the case in speech.
9. Numerals: more formal contexts > less formal contexts.
Komi: borrowing in dates, complicated expressions from Russian; also terms.
10. Higher numerals 1000, 100 > above 20 > above 10 > above 5 > below five.
Komi: probably so (dial): tyseca rubl'ej, sto ru-
bl'ejys.
11. Lower ordinals > higher ordinals.
Komi: pervoj / pervoj, suppletive. Dates and sums with Russian numerals, and numerals involved in institutions of Russian origin are retained.
12. Exclusivity > inclusivity (separation of a single concept from a larger set: order of prominence,
e.g. temporal sequence, or the attention granted to the object) «without», "instead of" «except for», contrast, phasal change («already»), restriction («only»), superlative).
Komi: opric, meste, uze (dial); tol'ko/tol'ko,
samoj.
13-18. Connectors and discourse words (see below § 3.).
19. Positive > negative answer particles.
Komi: da > ne.
20. Always > never > now, then.
Komi: vek > none > sefsas.
21. Days of week > times of day.
Komi: weekdays all, none for times of day -peknica, voskresenno....
22. Superlative > comparative.
Komi: superlative with samoj.
23. Nominal constituents (possessor, adjective) > ? (no information)
24. Copula predications > verbal predications.
Komi: ? (no information)
Other tendencies: negation particles are borrowed.
Komi: lie, ni both alone and combined. liebud / nebug' (dial), neotcyd «not only once», neuna «a little; not-much», ninom «something, nothing», nekod «no one», and in partial negation.
Relative particles; no borrowings in Komi.
Word-class borrowing hierarchy (by frequency): nouns, conjunctions > verbs > discourse markers > adjectives > interjections > adverbs > other particles, adpositions > numerals > pronouns > derivational affixes > inflectional affixes [5, p. 61].
Komi: adpositions and pronouns hardly borrowed, inflectional affixes not at all.
3. Earliest mentions in written sources
Since nearly everything on the scale seems to be borrowed, the scales might just as well be turned around. A diachronic development might therefore show the order of borrowing. On the basis of existing literature, I have tried to establish the order in which the items of the scale can be observed in the written language. [See also 13].
Conjunctions:
13. But > or > and.
but = no (14th cent); odnako (1884),
or = ili/libo (1813), lubo/ali (1884),
and = i (14th cent.), da (1780),
and / but = a (14th cent.); zo (1813).
14. Concessive, conditional, causal, purpose >
others:
Concessive «although»: kofa (1813), chotj / chotja (1844).
Conditional «if»: jezeli (1813), jesl'i (-ko), nezo, koli, ino, koby, jezeli budi (1884), raz (1949).
Causal «because»: da, dak (dial), potomu sto, potomu sto (dial, coll).
Clause-final causal «and, because»: da (1920).
Purpose: ysta med (1844), medby (mid-1800s), ysto med (1884), (med) stoby (dial).
Other subordinators:
Comparison «like»: rovno (sto), kak (dial).
Temporal «when»: odva (mid-1800s), kovda / kolda (dial), raz, poka /poka (1949).
Degree «rather than»: luttso cem, cem (dial).
15. Factual complementizers > nonfactuals: Explicative «that, what»: sto /sto (mid-1800s),
ysto (my), myj ysto, ustosy (dial). Non-factual complementizer: «as if»: bytto (mid-1800s), bytto-ko, kak bytto, butto, bytto(ko)nos (1884, dial).
Phasal adverbs and focus particles:
16. Yet, already > still > no longer:
1) «yet, still»: jestse (mid-1800s, dial, coll), jestsi-na (1920), jesso (1961).
2) «already, still»: uze (dial, coll).
17. Only > too > (even): «only»: tolko (mid-1800s, 1961).
«too»: (X-)da / daj, (X-)i (dial, 1921, 1949), tozo (1961), toze (dial, coll).
«neither»: (X-)ni (1921, 1949). «even»: dazo (mid-1800s, 1961).
18. Discourse markers > other particles
Fillers, tags, hesitation markers (pragmatic de-tachability):
vot (mid-1800s) «there», ino / inos (mid-1800s, 1961) «then, that is», bud'i (1961) «maybe, for instance»; tak, znacit, to jest' «so»; vrod'e «like» (dial), vobse / vobse-so / voobsom (dial, coll) «generally, that is»; «other particles»: vet / vot (mid-1800s) / ved / od (1961) «you know».
Utterance modifiers:
sorovno (mid-1800s) «all the same», sotaki / vso-taki (mid-1800s, 1961) «nevertheless», pozaluj (mid-1800s, 1961) «perhaps», pravda (1884, 1961) «true», konesno «of course», pervoj «first», naprimer «for example», ladno «all right», napervo (1961) «as for me»; po-moemu (dial) «in my opinion», a nicego (dial) «that's OK», vsmysl'e (dial) «in the sense of, that is».
Indefinites and interrogatives: no borrowed indefinites, except dial -nebud, -l'ibo «Q-something». No borrowed interrogatives.
4. Adverbs:
No implicational scales, but popular borrowings in Matras' lists are: metalinguistic (= utterance modifiers), procedural, propositional, epistemic expressions, evaluations of time and degree, markers of discourse structure and force, interactional performatives, and evaluatives.
a) Epistemic adverbs: naverno (mid-1800s, 1961) «surely», bukval'no, imenne (1920) «literally, exactly», podi-ko «perhaps», raz / razve (mid-1800s, 1961) «really?», neuzeli «surely not», zabyl' / zbyl' (mid-1800s) «really», nepremenno (1920, 1961) «absolutely», nadejno «probably», odva(ko) «hardly», dejstvitel'no «really», ud'ivitel'no (1961) «astonishingly»; vozmozno, mozet (byt), mozno (dial) «perhaps», kazeca (dial) «it seems», fso zo (dial) «all the same».
b) Evaluations of time: samej «exactly then», obycno «usually», solsem (1920) «entirely», setsas / tsaze, sejtsason /seicas (1920, 1961) «now, at once», opet (1920) «again», strazu / srazu (dial, 1961) «at once», kak raz (dial) «just then».
c) Evaluations of degree: zdovelno / zdovol (mid-1800s, 1961) «enough», prots (mid-1800s, 1961) «totally», tsut, tokoto (mid-1800s, 1961) «hardly (S),
just now», prosta/prosto «simply», posti (sto) (1920, 1961) «almost», pol'l'inno (1920) «totally», vernee «rather, more exactly», osobenno/osobenno (1961) «particularly»; primerno «approximately», v os-nownomso «basically», lutsso «better», polnostu «completely», tocno «exactly», sowsem «totally».
d) Procedurals: davaj (1920) / vaj (1961) «let's», exhortative inclusive -te: munam-te (dial) «let us go».
e) Greetings, exclamations: tsur! «mind you!», colom «hello» (mid-1880s), prosti, prosaj (1920), proscaj (1961) «farewell», zdorovo (mid-1800s, 1961), colom-zdorovo, -bytto «hello» (1961), pasibo «thanks», zdravstvujte «how are you», pozalujsta «please, you are welcome».
f) Other: narosno «on purpose», kaznoj / kazdoj (1920, 1961) «every», stav «all», pravil'no, nepravil'no «right, not-right», pramoj «rather, fairly», okurat / okuratnoja (1961) «exactly»; spolnosti «fully», mezdi tem «meanwhile» (dial).
g) More complex relations:
privative: oprits «except», protiv (1961) «against, counter», popereg (1961, 2000) «against, counter», zato (dial, 1961) «in return», a to (1961, 2000) «or else», naprasno (1920), darom (1961), zra «in vain» (dial), bez tebja (dial) «in your absence», meste / me-stan /mestao /mestayn (dial, 2000) «instead of».
5. Comments:
Conjunctions: «but-no», «and-i» are early loans in translations. «or-ili» is later. Komi had no coordinating conjunctions. «da» is perhaps later, a multipurpose, originally clause-final particle. Most of the rest attested in the 1800s had Komi counterparts, and they, especially the hybrids were later relegated to dialec-tisms. The literary language has imported many more complex sub- and co-ordinating conjunctions [see 7, or the dictionaries]. The fuller sources begin in mid-1800s, they already contain nearly everything. Dialects differ, depending on their physical contacts with Russians, later on literacy.
Adverbs: Early dictionaries included much dialect material, well-known loans for greetings, evaluations of degree, epistemic loans. Evaluations of time seem to start from XXth cent. Procedurals, epistemic and degree loans increase. The dictionary of 1961 included many Russian loans in all fields (ca. 25% of all the lexical items are Russian loans), many of them synonyms to Komi equivalents.
6. Motivations in Matras 2007:
In Matras' opinion, gaps in lexicon, prestige, social acceptability are not enough, as is suggested, e.g., in Aikhenvald [8, pp. 26-31]: combination of a tendency to fill a gap and to be able to say what your neighbours say similarly accounts for the borrowability of conjunctions, especially «or». Being able to say so is based on pragmatic salience of a construction, matching genres, and a tendency to achieve word-for-word and mor-pheme-per-morphome intertranslatability.
More important for Matras are:
1) frequency, meaning, usage (new consonants, lower ordinals, nouns),
2) cognitive complexity, low expectedness or accessibility (factual embedded events, linked independent events; contrast, concessives, phasal change, restrictive focus, superlative, condition, external modality) - the speakers' assertive authority is potentially reduced,
3) «conversational tension» and emotive level: prosody, unexpected chains of arguments, contradicting or challenging presupositions, responsibility for content beyond domain of secure knowledge, intervening with hearer-sided processing (discourse markers, connectors, causality markers).
Borrowing is a socially accepted compromise when the controlling the selection coincides with other sources of tension, unifying the structures, need to reduce the cognitive load - «fusion of the two systems». The susceptibility of a great number of grammatical categories to borrowing is pre-determined by their language processing function, therefore universal» [5, pp. 66-68].
Concerning exceptions, Matras states [5, p.36]: «It would be naive and counter-productive to ignore tendencies in a substantial group of languages only because they are not followed by all, or because they might be contradicted in 1-2 instances».
In our case, nearly all the predictions are fulfilled. There are very few exceptions; the most striking one is perhaps the absence of adpositions and personal pronouns - although a closer look at colloquial language may bring a «correction» even on this point.
7. General
As a more general conclusion, it may be remarked that Komi is not a mixed language. It retains its grammatical structure and basic vocabulary. It has during several hundreds of years adopted from Russian not only lexical items, but also salient pragmatic patterns and types of context, ways of organizing discourse structures with calquing and borrowing. In terms of A. Aikhenvald, we are dealing with a layered language: «Intensive language contact with heavy diffusion of patterns - phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and especially pragmatic - with or without any diffusion of forms results in a layered, not a mixed language» [8, p.10].
References
1. Thomason, Sarah G. & Terrence Kaufman. Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. University of California Press, 1988.
2. Thomason, Sarah G. Language contact: an introduction. Georgetown University Press, 2001.
3. Leinonen, Marja. Influence of Russian on the syntax of Komi // Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen, Band 57, Heft 1-3. Helsinki, 2002, pp. 195-358; Leinonen, Marja. Russian influence on the Izma Komi dialect // International Journal of Bilingualism, 2009. Volume 13, Number 3, pp.309-330; Schlachter, W. 1974: Die koordinierenden Konjunktionen des Syr-janischen als Entlehnungsproblem / Acta lingui-
stica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, to-mus XXIV, F 1-4, pp. 331-336.
4. Matras, Yaron 2010: Contact, Convergence, and Typology / The Handbook of Language Contact, ed. Raymond Hickey. Wiley-Black-well, pp. 66-85; Matras, Yaron 1998: Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing. Linguistics 36, pp.281-331.
5. Matras, Yaron. The borrowability of structural categories / Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective, ed. Yaron Matras, Jeanette Sakel. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 31-73.
6. Matras, Yaron. Language Contact. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
7. Maitinskaya К.Е. Служебные слова в финно-угорских языках [Syntactic words in the Fin-no-Ugric languages]. Moscow, 1982 [Majtin-skaja, K.E. Sluzebnye slova v finno-ugorskih jazykah. Moskva, 1982]; 0шя коми кыв. Мор-фология/[Modern Komi grammar, Ed. G.V.Fe-dyuneva. Syktyvkar, 2000]; Попова Э.Н. История развития союзов в коми языке [History of development of conjunctions in the Komi language]// Пути развития пермских языков история и современность [Ways of development of the Permian languages, history and the present] / Proc. of the Inst. of Language, Literature and History. Issue 73. Syktyvkar, 2014. [Popova E.N. Istorija raz-vitija sojuzov v komi jazyke] pp. 123-138.
8. Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. Grammars in Contact: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective /Alexand-ra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon (ed.) Grammar in Contact. A Cross-Linguistic Typology. Explorations in linguistic typology, 4. Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 1-66.
Examples from text collections, dictionaries and grammars: Источники
14th cent. - translations of religious texts by St. Stephen of Perm into Old Permic (in: К. Редеи. Влияние церковнославянского языка на семантику и синтаксис древнепермского языка. Сыктывкар,1996 / Rédei Karoly. Vlijanie cerko-vnoslavjanskogo jazyka na semantiku i sintaksis drevnepermskogo jazyka. Syktyvkar, 1996).
1780 - Komi word lists by Academician I. Lepehin (in: В.И. Лыткин. Древнепермский язык. M., 1952 / V. I. Lytkin. Drevnepermskij jazyk. Moskva, 1952).
1813 - А. Флеров. Зырянская грамматика. СПб., 1813 / A. Fljorov: Zyrjanskaja gram-matika. St.Peterburg - the first printed grammar of Komi.
1844 - M. A. Castrén: Elementa grammati-ces syrjaenae. Helsingforsiae - A grammar of (Izhma) Komi.
mid-1800s - J. Kalima 1910: Die russischen Lehnwörter im Syrjänischen. Mémoires de la Societé Finno-Ougrienne XXIX. Helsingfors - based
on F. J. Wiedemann: Syrjänischdeutsches Wörterbuch nebst einem wotjakisch-deutschen, Petersburg 1880 - based in turn on Н. Попов. Русско-коми словарь (рукопись, 1830-1860) / Russian-Komi manuscript dictionary of N. Popov, 1830-1860s, and П. Савваитов. Грамматика зырянского языка. СПб., 1850 / P. Savvaitov: Grammatika zyrjanskogo jazyka. St.Peterburg, 1850.
1884 - F.J. Wiedemann: Grammatik der syr-jänischen Sprache mit Berücksichtigung ihrer Dialekte und des Wotjakischen. St. Peterburg.
1920 - Volksdichtung der Komi (Syrjänen), gesammelt und herausgegeben von D.R. Fokos-Fuchs, Budapest 1951 - based on his manuscripts of 1916-1917 / 1920.
1921 - Sandrö Vas^ölön (V.A. Molodcov) Komi grammatika tuj pis'ködys'. Syktyvdin, 1921// В.А. Молодцов. Коми грамматика туй письк0-дысь. Сыктывдин, 1921. - the first grammar written in Komi.
1949 - Д.В. Бубрих. Грамматика литературного коми языка. Л., 1947 / D.V. Bubrih. Grammatika literaturnogo komi jazyka. Leningrad, 1947.
1961 - Коми-русский словарь / Под ред. В.И. Лыткина. М., 1961/ Komi-russkij slovar', ed. V. I. Lytkin. Moskva, 1961 - the first extensive (ca. 25.000 words) bilingual dictionary of Komi.
2000 - Ошя коми кыв. Морфология / Под. ред. Г. В. Федюневой. Сыктывкар, 2000 / Onija komi kyv. Morfologija, ed. G. V. Fedjunjova. Syktyvkar, 2000. - the new grammar of Komi.
Dial - Dialect monographs, text collections, other materials from 1930-1980s (see Leinonen 2002).
Coll - colloquial language of the XXth cent.
KjaE - Komi jazyk enciklopedija, ed. G.V.Fe-djunjova / Коми язык. Энциклопедия / Под ред. Г.В. Федюнёвой. М., 1998.
Статья поступила в редакцию 18.03.2015.