Mixed Copying in Blogs: Evidence from Estonian-Russian Language Contacts

Abstract

The paper applies the Code Copying Framework (ccf) to Estonian-Russian language contacts in Live Journal blogs. The nature of blogs (an asynchronous, more written-like genre) allows us to look into individual multilingual practices and to discover aspects of contact-induced change that are absent in oral communication (choice of script, rendition of other-language items etc). ccf distinguishes between global copying (akin to code-switching/borrowing in other frameworks), selective copying (phenomena in morphosyntax, semantics etc) and mixed copying. The latter means that one component of a complex item is a global copy and the other a selective one and occurs in multi-word items (compounds, constructions, analytic forms, idioms). Six types of mixed copies are analysed. It is argued that this type of copying requires closer attention because 1) it demonstrates what is perceived as a collocation or multiword unit by a multilingual user; 2) it contributes to the understanding of meaning (semantically specific components are likely to be copied globally; 3) it is in accordance with notions in cognitive linguistics (compositionality, blending).