Keelekontaktid, laenatavus ja verbi kopeerimine eestivene keelevariandis
Copying of Verbs in Estonia's Russian

Summary/Abstract: Numerous scholars of contact-induced language change have tried to establish borrowability hierarchies. Although different in details, all hierarchies have one feature in common: nouns are most borrowable items, while verbs are believed to be borrowed less frequently. The article applies a code-copying model (elaborated by Johanson), which takes into consideration both lexicon and structure, sociolinguistic and structural factors, and the dynamic nature of varieties in contact (a complex input in multilingual and non-first generation speakers). The working hypothesis is as follows: units that are active at discourse level are likely to be copied globally (nouns, pragmatic particles, sometimes adjectives, numerals etc). Certain types of grammatical meaning (modality, evidentiality) also play an important role for the discourse and, thus, are also likely to be copied (but this is not necessarily global copying). Basing my discussion on varieties of Russian spoken in Estonia, I conclude that, although verbs (unless semantically specific) are less probable candidates for global copying, they are very good candidates for selective copying. It is also explicable by the fact that verbs are less important on discourse-organization level.

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