On the Typology of Immigrant Slavic Dialects in Russia

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to introduce a typology of immigrant Slavic dialects spoken in the Russian Federation. The paper deals with two Czech and two Polish dialects located in the Northern Caucasus and in Siberia and with the West Ukrainian patois of Siberian Hollanders. The author outlines primarily the internal linguistic typology of those patois, including a comparative structural analysis. All of the dialects examined here show good preservation of their original dialectal systems and, at the same time, they have been strongly influenced by their language surroundings, first and foremost by regional varieties of Russian. In some aspects of their systems, however, certain developments indicate evidence of the relatively high vitality of these patois.