Chinese-Russian Language Contact

The presented dissertation consists of an introduction, five chapters and a conclusion. The introduction discusses theory of language contact, outlines the studies on language contact and the Chinese-Russian language contact in particular. If two or more languages happen to have some kind of relations, in the process of which there is a certain influence on two or more languages, such a phenomenon is called "language contact". The language contact is mainly influenced by social factors and interaction between nations. The language contact is a complicated process. The language contact that occurs between people who speak different languages can be divided into different types according to different criteria. For instance,1) active vs. passive contact,2) natural vs. unnatural contact,3) oral vs. written contact,4) direct vs. indirect contact,5) language contact between related vs. unrelated languages. Language contacts result in the appearance of borrowed vocabulary (loan words), mixed languages and bilingualism. The chapter determines the type of the Chinese-Russian language contact and objectives of the research, describes the sources of language materials, the methods of the research, its novelty and value.The first chapter mainly introduces the history and the present situation of the relationship between China and Russia. The interaction of the countries forms the basis of the Chinese-Russian language contact. China and Russia (including the Soviet Union) have a long history of the interaction. Two countries are neighbors. The communication between the countries covers economic, military, cultural, political and other spheres of the everyday life. The period of close and active interaction between China and Russia highlights the obviousness of the progress of the Chinese-Russian language contact. However, the period of deteriorating relations drastically reduces the intensity of the language contact existing between China and Russia. The trade between China and Russia contributed to the development of frequent interactions between the countries. In the process of exchanging goods people learned from each other, received knowledge about some new realia. The country, which imported this knowledge, gained information on some new goods. At the same time a new word identifying this new type of goods appeared in the recipient language. For instance, such words were "pearl" and "tea", both borrowed from the Chinese language. A massive immigration of Russian people to China began with the start of the Eastern railroad’s construction at the end of the19th century. During the period of Chinese-Russian friendship many Chinese went to the Soviet Union to study. Contemporarily the cultural sphere of interaction between the countries features such events as the Chinese-Russian "national years", the Chinese-Russian "language years", the Chinese-Russian "years of tourism". The specificity of relationship between the countries in different periods reveals social factors influencing the Chinese-Russian language contact.We assume that the phonetic level was free from influence in the Chinese-Russian language contact. Therefore we focus our main attention on the grammar and vocabulary.In the second chapter we discuss the Russian vocabulary of the Chinese origin. The ascertainment of Russian lexical units of the Chinese origin is one of the key points of the presented research, as well as one of its difficulties. The analysis of the results of a wide range survey revealed52Russian words of the Chinese origin. The phonetic, morphologic, grammar analysis of the each word was carried out. While analyzing the lexical units, we payed attention to the morphology of the word. We observed whether the morphology of a word of the isolating language changes when it is borrowed by the inflexional language. This can be seen from the interference of the Chinese vocabulary into the Russian language. Afterwards the categorization of the given vocabulary was completed. Apart from that, the chapter contains results of the survey, showing the awareness of the Russian people that the given Russian words are of Chinese origin.The third chapter dwells upon the Chinese words of the Russian origin. The amount of the Chinese words of the Russian origin is much bigger than the amount of the Russian words of the Chinese origin. In the first part the taxonomic method of the analysis was implemented. The borrowed vocabulary was classified into phonemic loans, semantic loans, marked phonemic loans, marked semantic loans, caiques and hybrid words. The Chinese words of the Russian origin belong to different levels of culture:the upper level and the bottom level. We also conducted an analysis concerning the levels of culture. The categories of the social spheres include:political, economic, military, art, culture and educational spheres, life sphere, science and technology sphere. The taxonomy displays that the impact on these spheres has been different.The second part of this chapter discusses the Chinesation of words of the Russian origin. The language contact continually develops and does not keep its original condition. Words of the Russian origin after entering the Chinese language experience certain grammatical, phonetic, semantic, grammatological and other changes. The influence of the Chinese language gradually causes the Chinesation of the vocabulary. The means of the Chinesation include:the change of a tone stress, swallowing of words ends, consonant changes, change of morphemes, omission of morphemes and changes in the meaning of a word.The forth chapter describes another outcome of the Chinese-Russian language contact-"Chinese-Russian mixed languages". The chapter includes the analysis of three Chinese-Russian mixed languages, they are:Kyahta mixed language, Harbin Russian pidgin and the slang of Russian students in China. Kyahta mixed language is a Chinese-Russian mixed language used by merchants on the Chinese-Russian border. In the beginning Kyahta mixed language had a structure, dictionaries, teaching materials. Both sides regarded the dictionaries and teaching materials as an example. The fall of Kyahta trade and the start of the Chinese Eastern railroad construction resulted in the spread of Kyahta mixed language. This development enriched the language. The structure of the language became weak and many variants appeared. Many dialect words entered this mixed language. There are few researchers of Kyahta mixed language. There is a lack of homogeneity in the materials of Kyahta language. At present Kyahta mixed language almost became extinct.In the last century Harbin "Russian pidgin" was spread from mouth to mouth among the citizens of Harbin. This "Russian like pidgin" only has an oral form. The written form only includes some shops signs (on displays of shops) and advertisement. The usage of the "Russian pidgin" includes:street trade, service providing, casual conversations. The type of interaction is informal. The word order in the "Russian pidgin" corresponds to the rules of the Chinese language. Speaking about the vocabulary of the "Russian pidgin", it contains words of the Russian origin, but there are words of the Chinese origin as well. The analysis of the "Russian pidgin’s" vocabulary also includes a questionnaire survey’s analysis.The third part of this chapter describes the Chinese-Russian slang of the Russians who live in China. This slang was found out by us in the circle of foreign students in China. This Chinese-Russian slang is used by the Russian people who live and study in China. The main vocabulary of this slang is Chinese, but the pronunciation and grammar rules are of the Russian language. The ordinary Russian morphology is applied.The fifth chapter describes the influence of the Russian language on the Chinese grammar. The50s of the20th century is the flourishing time of the Chinese-Russian relationship. In the spheres of politics, economy, culture, science and technology China learnt from Russia. The impact is substantial. The readers of many political books were under the influence of the translation from the Russian language, which caused the lengthening of the Chinese sentences. As a result long sentences in the Chinese language became a common event. By analyzing the works of Lenin, Stalin and other writers, we traced the Russian origins of some Chinese grammar constructions. In that period the Chinese language borrowed the following grammar cliche:“如果……那么……”("if...then..."),“最……之一”("one of the best.."),“如此……以至……”("that way... that.."). The influence of the Russian language resulted into the development and the usage of some Chinese grammar structures. The impact of the Russian language on the Chinese morphology is obvious. These morphemes include one-syllable and multi-syllable morphemes. Monosyllabic morphemes include the "苏" and’‘布”.In addition to words, the Chinese language also contains a number of Russian affixes, such as:“-主义”,“-主义者”,“-性”,“-化”,“-派”,“-分子”.Prefixes include the following:“非-”,“半-”,“反-”References of the presented paper contain a number of Chinese, Russian and English books. There are three applications to the thesis. The application one has a list of the Russian words of the Chinese origin. Each word has a2language definitions. The application two has a list of the Chinese words of the Russian origin. The application three contains the materials of The Chinese-Russian mixed language and a list of words of the Chinese-Russian slang of foreign students. This list contains definitions of the words and examples of their usage.The thesis’s novelty contribution is in:1. The structure of the thesis and its ideas are double sided. In other words, it reflects the influence of the Russian language on the Chinese language and the influence of the Chinese language on the Russian language. The research avoided limitedness and narrowness of the one-side analysis. As there are comparatively a number of the results of the Russian language’s influence on the Chinese language, the presented thesis is analyzing the most important of them. Besides the paper bridges the gap concerning the influence of the Chinese language on the Russian language.2. The study of the old language materials and the new ones. A substantial part of the Russian words of the Russian origin and the vocabulary of the mixed languages are becoming or already became extinct. The presented thesis is arranging all the materials of the research and the results of the surveys, restoring the original appearance. Besides, the Chinese-Russian slang in the circles of foreign students was examined. Such materials significantly differ from the similar studies.3. The awareness survey. The level of the acknowledgement of the Chinese words of the Russian origin and the vocabulary of the Chinese-Russian pidgin among the local people is a not easy-to-answer question. Through the questionnaire survey, we obtained the accurate data of different cognitive levels for each word. On this basis the activity level of each word and the depth of the Chinese-Russian language contact can be seen. In this respect this paper is the first research among similar works.