Russian Loanwords Research Articles

Ideophones (review)

Reviewed by: Ideophones ed. by F. K. Erhard Voeltz, Christa Kilian-Hatz Edward J. Vajda Ideophones. Ed. by F. K. Erhard Voeltz and Christa Kilian-Hatz. (Typological studies in language 44.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2001. Pp. x, 434. ISBN: 1588110192. $125.00. The term ‘ideophone’ was coined several decades ago to describe words conveying ‘a vivid representation of an idea in sound’ (C. M. Doke, Bantu linguistic terminology, London: Longmans, 1935, p. 118). Both term and definition have persisted, though a clearer understanding of the phenomenon has been long in arriving. Publication of the 29 contributing articles in this volume grew out of presentations made at the 1st International Symposium on Ideophones (January 1999, St. Augustin, Germany). The editors and conference organizers set as their main purpose ‘to retrieve ideophones from the particularized, language-specialized investigations of researchers here and there’ (2). At the same time, they acknowledge that a more precise syntactic and semantic [End Page 823] definition of the ideophone may not be possible. While not moving us closer to any universal definition of what does or does not constitute an ideophone, the individual articles do shed important light on several aspects of ideophones crosslinguistically. The contributing articles describe ideophonic words in languages belonging to geographically and genetically disparate families. Africa is the best represented, with sixteen languages from nine separate groups. Also discussed are four Asian and two Australian languages, along with Pastaza Quechua, Finnish, and Estonian. These studies reveal ideophones to be more widespread than previously assumed, though additional examples from Europe and the Americas are needed to support the editors’ suggestion that they are a universal category of human language (2). Many of the articles offer detailed semantic interpretations of ideophones used in context, clearly illustrating them as a functionally unified category helping to vividly dramatize the narrated event. This dramaturgic effect need not reflect direct sound symbolism (true onomatopoeia); in many cases ideophones convey emotive responses to color, smell, or the awareness of intensity, speed, or some other sensory peculiarity of the described event or state. Also explored are various crosslinguistic regularities in the derivation of ideophonic stems as well as their frequent accompaniment during speech by gestures and other paralinguistic phenomena. Of particular interest for an understanding of ‘ideogenesis’ is Vesa Jarva’s account of how certain Russian loan words in Finnish have acquired ideophonic characteristics (111–19). Similar exploration of ideophones in other well-known European languages might have further buttressed claims of the universality of the phenomenon, perhaps also shedding more light on its possible linguistic origins. This book merely whets the appetite for more information since none of the conclusions actually yields a more rigorous definition of the ideophone. The editors’ greatest contribution is in juxtaposing such a diverse range of new case studies. Still, the really major questions remain. How and why do ideophones develop? What structural types of languages are most likely to evolve a rich array of ideophonic words? What sociolinguistic factors favor the development and maintenance of ideophones? What is the exact relationship between ideophones and onomatopoeia? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, do ideophones constitute a separate part of speech or are they best regarded as a special lexical substyle within the conventionally recognized form classes? If this collection of articles inspires future inquiries into any of these issues, it will have proven a very successful undertaking indeed. Edward J. Vajda Western Washington University Copyright © 2003 Linguistic Society of America

A Note on Turkic Lexical Elements in the Slovo o polku Igoreve and the Zadonščina

While the literature on Turkic loan words in the "Slovo o polku Igoreve" is an important contribution to the study of Turkic loan words in Russian, Turkologists, until recently, had not paid attention to the presence of Turkic loan words in "Zadonščina". The existence of these lexical elements in the "Zadonščina", however, sheds light on the question (which played a critically important role in the recent controversy over the authenticity of the "Slovo") of the chronological relationship between the "Zadonščina" and the "Slovo". The juxtaposition of Altaic (Turkic) loan words found in the "Zadonščina" compared with the Turkic lexis of the "Slovo" shows that the "Zadonščina" is a secondary work, dependent on the "Slovo".

Variation in the Adaptation of Finnic Loanwords in Russian

Variation in the Adaptation of Finnic Loanwords in Russian

On The Erza-Mordvinian Birth Customs in Sabajevo and Povodimovo Villages

During 1984‐1989 I interviewed women in the Estonian villages at the coast of the Black Sea in the Caucasus, in Estonia, Ingria and Mordvinia on the topic of birth traditions. The accumulated material has been compiled into an overview of the birth traditions of the Izhorians of the Soikkola Peninsula (Mikkor 1999a) and the Finnish of the Kurgola Peninsula, as well as of the beliefs related to childbearing and midwifery (obstetrics) of the Caucasian Estonians (Mikkor 1996, 1998a, 1999b). In 1988 and 1989 I collected material on life’s notable days in the Erza-Mordvinian villages of Sabajevo and Povodimovo; the recorded accounts have resulted in an article about the burial and birth customs in the villages (Mikkor 1994, 1998b). Both Sabajevo and Povodimovo are located in a region with a relatively mono-ethnic population where the Erza folk culture has survived for the longest time. This characterisation is most typical to Sabajevo village where the traditional folk costumes were worn at festive rituals as late as in 1980s. Povodimovo was considerably more “urbanised” than Sabajevo: instead of the rustic wooden cottages people often built brick houses, the tradition of wearing traditional costumes became obsolete already in 1920s‐1930s, also, the dialect of Erza villagers contained a larger number of Russian loan words.

Middle Low German Loanwords in Russian

Middle Low German Loanwords in Russian

Russian Influence on Native Alaskan Culture

When the United States acquired Russian Alaska, North America lost a culture.' Although the Alaska purchase took place in 1867, vestiges of Russian culture are still plentiful in Alaska. To discover Alaska's Russian past one has only to look at place names like Baranof Island, Shelikof Strait, Semisopochnoi Island, and Point Romanof; see the many native settlements where the Russian Orthodox church is a prominent ediface; and visit villages such as on Kodiak Island, where one discovers that Raymond is actually Roman and Willy Vasilij. The extent of this contact can be seen in the Russian loan words present in modern-day Eskimo, Aleut, Athapascan, and Tlingit. The most pronounced influence is to be found in Aleut (Aleuts were the first native peoples to make contact with the Russians) and two of the Yupik (Western) Eskimo dialects, Central Yupik and Suk Eskimo. Other Yupik dialects such as Cuk (spoken on Nunivak Island) and Siberian Yupik (spoken on St. Lawrence Island forty miles from Siberia as well as on the Cukbi Peninsula in Siberia), experienced little Russian influence. The full extent of the interaction of Alaskan native

Russian Loans in Uzbek

Fears have often been expressed outside the Soviet Union that the influx of Russian words into the non-Russian languages is part of an attempt to russianize them with a view to make them ultimately superfluous. These fears now seem to be greatly exaggerated, as there is little evidence to show that these languages are losing their vitality or are doomed to extinction. While the total lexicon of any given language, in this case Uzbek, the third language numerically (after Russian and Ukrainian) and the largest non-Slavic language, may have a significant number of Russian loanwords, it does not necessarily follow that all these words are in fact an essential segment of the language. The life and viability of a language depend not upon the percentage of so-called foreign words in its vocabulary, but upon its daily use in ordinary situations and in creative writing. The major problem in this area has been the apparently large number of Russian borrowings seen in the non-Russian languages, especially those in non-Slavic ones using Cyrillic. Words are often taken in their Russian orthographic shape without regard for the internal rules of the various languages. Even a cursory glance at any newspaper is enough to show the casual observer that these languages have been russianized to a certain extent. Soviet sources have always emphasized that there has been a “sovietization” of non-Russian languages, while admitting that Russian is the main source for new vocabulary. However it is pointed out that most of these borrowings are “international” words taken into the several languages via Russian. Counter arguments have emphasized that the “common-spelling” principle, by which all words from Russian, be they “international” or not, are borrowed in their exact Russian spelling, proves that russianization, not sovietization, is taking place.

German Loanwords in Russian 1550-1690

German Loanwords in Russian 1550-1690

German Loanwords in Russian 1550-1690

German Loanwords in Russian 1550-1690

English Loanwords in Russian

English Loanwords in Russian

Russian Loanwords in Southwestern Pomo

Previous articleNext article No AccessNotes and ReviewsRussian Loanwords in Southwestern PomoRobert L. OswaltRobert L. Oswalt Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by International Journal of American Linguistics Volume 24, Number 3Jul., 1958Franz Boas Centennial Volume Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/464466 Views: 8Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Matthias Pache, Søren Wichmann, Mikhail Zhivlov Words for ‘dog’ as a diagnostic of language contact in the Americas, (Apr 2016): 385–410.https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.173.17pacGunnar Jacobsson Einige slawische Lehnwortverbindungen, Scando-Slavica 22, no.11 (Aug 2008): 93–124.https://doi.org/10.1080/00806767608600698