DERIVATIONAL ADAPTATION OF -ING ANGLICISMS IN RUSSIAN

 

TIMUR AKISHEV^*

 

 

Summary

 

The methodological approach implemented in this research is that of a corpus study, in which I plan to search for -ing anglicisms in the main section of the Russian National Corpus. Upon determining the main formation patterns of these cross-linguistic constructions, I will try to coin a new anglicism of this type to demonstrate the ways in which borrowings are adapted in the recipient language, Russian, and determine what it is exactly that their successful integration and interaction with Russian-origin morphemes depend on. This study will contribute to the expansion of the extant body of knowledge on Russian-English bilingualism and loanword morphology.

 

Key Words: Russian linguistics, morphology, loanwords, anglicisms, Russian National Corpus, quantitative approach.

 

Introduction

 

Language contact is a widespread phenomenon by which languages interact with and influence each other. Their interaction most frequently results in language change, which can occur at any level of a particular language (Appel & Muysken, 2005). One instance of this is the change at the lexical or word level of the language in question. Thus, based on these processes, language contact and change, languages can borrow and use words from one another (Appel & Muysken, 2005). The two languages whose contact and change at the lexical level are considered in the current study are English and Russian. Russian, an East Slavic language, is currently characterized by the presence of a vast number of words borrowed from English, a West Germanic language (Bogomolets, 2013). Words borrowed from English, or English loanwords, are most frequently referred to as anglicisms. According to the most commonly used definition, an anglicism is a word or phrase of English origin which is borrowed into another language. Attracting scholarly attention due to their inherently complex cross-linguistic nature, anglicisms have been the subject of linguistic scrutiny modern Russian. Thus, what has been of particular interest to linguists working in the fields of Russian language studies and linguistics are the grammatical properties that anglicisms acquire upon their integration into the system of the Russian language (Aristova, 1978).

Apart from the acquisition of basic grammatical features of Russian, English loanwords tend to develop and retain a certain phonological pattern, morphological structure, and syntactic functions of native Russian words (Vorobyova, 2009). Of all kinds of borrowable lexical items, the current study will primarily focus on English-origin nouns with the suffix -ing and how they are integrated into Russian. These nouns also have a tendency to acquire the general grammatical characteristics of native Russian nouns (Bogomolets, 2013). Thus, in the process of integration into Russian, these anglicisms are adapted to correspond to basic Russian nominal patterns. An example of this adaptation is the assignment of Russian nominal categories of gender, case, and number to the newly integrated English-origin nouns with the suffix -ing (Vorobyova, 2009). As has been mentioned, these characteristics have been studied extensively in Russian linguistics. However, little is researched and known in relation to the morphological productivity of this type of borrowings.

As evidenced by the richness and flexibility of Russian derivational word-formation, these -ing anglicisms often tend to transform into more complex linguistic structures. Thus, apart from assimilation into Russian as full-fledged nouns, these loanwords can also be transformed into verbs (Bogomolets, 2013). Their transformation into verbal constructions is based on the morphological process of suffixival derivation characteristic of solely the Russian language (Bogomolets, 2013). In other words, what makes these anglicisms become verbs is not at all English morphology, but native Russian word-formation. Thus, in the process of transformation into verbal constructions, these English-origin nouns are supplemented by native Russian complex verbal suffixes (Dyakov, 2001). One such suffix is the complex imperfective infinitival -ovat’.  The process of combination of the -ing loanwords with the -ovat’ suffix results in new and unprecedented linguistic structures.

According to Dyakov (2001), derivational adaptation of English loanwords is a popular word-formation strategy in the modern Russian language. However, it has not been extensively studied in the framework of Russian-English bilingualism. With that in mind, the current study aims to determine the main characteristics of the process of morphological integration of anglicisms into the Russian language, with the purpose of identifying the main principles of derivational adaptation of English-origin nouns with the suffix -ing and their transformation into complex cross-linguistic verbal constructions with the suffix -ovat’. Their cross-linguistic nature is of particular importance in this study, as it is possible to interpret as word-internal code-switching, a special type of code-switching between two particular languages which occurs inside the word, i.e. on the morphemic level (Muysken, 2000).

 

Literature Review

 

First of all, it is necessary to provide a definition of the term anglicism to have a more comprehensive understanding of how words of English origin are integrated into Russian. Thus, according to Dyakov (2012), an anglicism is ‘a unit of any linguistic level transferred into the Russian language that undergoes a certain alteration or retains its original English-language characteristics’. In his study, Dyakov considers the notion of anglicism and different forms and levels of borrowing of English-origin words (2012). Based on his findings, an important distinction should be made between borrowing as a means of enriching the vocabulary and native Russian word-formation based on the use of English-origin forms. What Dyakov’s work also emphasizes is that the majority of English loanwords in Russian are nouns, which stems from the fact that they do not undergo any considerable alterations in the course of assimilation and tend to retain their grammatical features in the recipient language (2012). Based on Dyakov’s findings, it is possible to infer that English-origin nouns with the suffix -ing are assimilated into Russian as nouns, and that suffix is transliterated into Russian as инг /ɪng/, henceforth referred to as -инг. Importantly, in this study I will use both forms -ing and -инг to refer to the English-origin suffix and its adapted-into-Russian version, respectively.

Secondly, it is important to consider the main characteristics of the grammatical assimilation of anglicisms in order to better understand what their morphological productivity depends on.  As has been mentioned, grammatical assimilation of loanwords in Russian is a popular research field. Thus, an analysis of 673 newest anglicisms conducted by Vorobyova (2009) demonstrates that the adaptation of anglicisms to the grammatical system of the Russian language is based on the traditional mechanisms of grammatical assimilation of borrowings. These loanwords acquire the main characteristics of Russian nouns: gender, number, and case. The gender of the newly assimilated -ing nouns is strictly masculine, which stems from the fact that Russian morphophonology generally requires nouns ending in a consonant to be masculine (Vorobyova, 2009).

As I have previously mentioned, -инг nouns have a tendency to interact with other natively Russian forms, one of which is the imperfective infinitival structure -ovat’, or -овать /əˈvatʲ/, henceforth referred to in this study as simply -овать. The reason why I chose this particular complex verb form is that it is generally used to form verbs from both natively Russian and borrowed nouns. Importantly, I will only consider the way these two forms, -инг and -овать, interact, not taking into consideration the particulars of Russian verb semantics behind the latter form.

I intend to take a closer look at the specifics of derivation of the -ing anglicisms by conducting a corpus study. Before the implementation of the corpus study, it is important to mention that, similar to the current study, Bogomolets’ research (2013) considers the possibility of derivational adaptation of the newest -ing anglicisms in Russian. The data in her study were extracted from the Russian National Corpus. The corpus she provides includes more than 13,000 tokens with the -инг suffix. The main purpose of her research is to determine the changes that anglicisms undergo in the course of adaptation into Russian on every level of the language. Based on the analysis of the data from the corpus, Bogomolets comes up with two types of -ing anglicisms based on their frequency of occurrence: occasional and widespread (2013). Considering her findings and my own, I intend to expand this typology later on in the paper. What is more, I also plan to draw examples from the Russian National Corpus, but the current study is not in any case a replication of Bogomolets’ research. Instead of focusing on the changes occurring to loanwords on all linguistic levels, I am only concerned about the morphological interactions that occur between -инг and -овать. These interactions may serve as evidence of the so-called intra-word or word-internal code-switching. There is substantial debate on whether or not this type of code-switching actually exists. For those who advocate its existence, it is defined as the bilingual use of elements from two languages on a word-internal or morphemic level (Grimstad, Lohndal, & Åfarli, 2015).

In this study, I hypothesize that there is code-switching on the word-internal level between the originally English morpheme -ing assimilated into Russian as -инг and the Russian verb suffix -овать. In other words, my hypothesis is that the suffix -овать interacts not with the whole word ending with -ing, but solely with this suffix assimilated into Russian as a seemingly inseparable form -инг. This means that this morpheme is possible to detach from the original English root even when the whole structure undergoes assimilation into Russian, and there is code-switching on a suffixival level, rather than simple addition of a Russian verb suffix to an anglicism ending in -инг.

 

Methodology

 

The methodological approach of the current study includes two procedures.  First of all, I will identify the frequency of occurrence of the loanwords with the suffix -инг in the main section of the Russian National Corpus. Subsequently, I will determine whether the most frequently occurring items have a tendency to interact with the suffix -овать, thus conducting a follow-up search for any items with the complex cross-linguistic suffixival compound -инговать. Any discovered items will be discussed in a way that can allow me to test my main hypothesis. Secondly, upon describing the formative patterns of these derivation-based structures, I will try to coin a novel loanword of this kind with a view of demonstrating the main characteristics of the process of successful adaptation of -ing borrowings into the recipient language, and determine the patterns of the interaction between English-origin suffixes and native Russian verbal morphemes.

 

Results

 

A simple first search for nouns ending in the assimilated-into-Russian suffix -инг in the main section of the Russian National Corpus returned 13,007 documents and 42,056 contexts. To avoid repetition of different word-forms of the same lexemes, I set up the next search to be restricted to the Disambiguated Search parameter. To make the search even narrower and more relevant to the real-life use of loanwords, I set the Genre & Type option to solely the non-fiction parameter. What is more, in order for the results of my next search to be more relevant to the recent or current use of these anglicisms, I limited the date of creation of entries in the subcorpus being developed for this study to the time span of 2015–Present. Thus, my second search returned 137 examples of use of words ending in -инг in 397 contexts. The results contained a lot of words borrowed from English that in fact: a) do not contain the suffix -ing (e.g. king, ring); b) are last names ending in -ing, which, I believe, are not instances of the use of the suffix in question (e.g. Hawking, Turing, Rowling); c) are compounds consisting of English-English and Russian-English morphemic elements and are based mostly on other, more frequent, examples. Having deleted the lemmas related to either of the three patterns mentioned above from my subcorpus, I came up with a list of 14 anglicisms ending in the assimilated-into-Russian version of the suffix -ing. The next step is determining whether or not these 14 words have a capacity to interact with the suffix -овать to produce verbal constructions. For this purpose, I started a new corpus search for each of these words in their combination with the suffix -овать (e.g. митинг-овать /mʲɪtʲɪnɡəˈvatʲ/ ‘to hold a political rally’.). The results of both searches are as follows.

 

Table 1. Frequency of occurrence of -ing anglicisms and their interaction with -овать

 

 

The results obtained from the Russian National Corpus concerning the interaction between -инг and -овать might not be accurate, since a simple Google search of most of the lemmas in Table 1 returns a certain number of examples pertaining to different social contexts. It is, however, irrelevant to the current study why these words are mostly absent from the corpus. What I focus on instead is the discussion of whether or not there is word-internal code-switching between these morphemes in the examples that I was able to find.

 

Discussion

 

Based on my hypothesis, which states that there is English-Russian word-internal code-switching between the originally English morpheme -ing assimilated into Russian as -инг and the Russian verb suffix -овать, the morphological structure of the examples should look as follows.

(1) рейтинговать /rejtɪnɡəˈvatʲ/ ‘to rank’

rat.ing à BRWG (1) à рейт.инг à DERIV (2) à рейт.инг.ßCS (3)àIMPERF-INF

(2) митинговать /mʲɪtʲɪnɡəˈvatʲ/ ‘to hold a political rally’

meet.ing à BRWG (1) à мит.инг à DERIV (2) à мит.инг.ßCS (3)àIMPERF-INF

(3) демпинговать /dempɪnɡəˈvatʲ/ ‘to dump’

dump.ing à BRWG (1) à демп.инг à DERIV (2) à демп.инг.ßCS (3)àIMPERF-INF

(4) прессинговать /presɪnɡəˈvatʲ/ ‘to put pressure on’

press.ing à BRWG (1) à пресс.инг à DERIV (2) à пресс.инг.ßCS (3)àIMPERF-INF

According to my analysis, when words of English origin with the suffix -ing are assimilated into Russian, they tend to retain their structural divisibility (Stage 1: Borrowing). Upon integration into Russian, they can become productive (Stage 2: Derivation). When -инг anglicisms undergo derivation, they interact with the native Russian imperfective infinitival suffix -овать, activating code-switching mechanisms (Stage 3: Code-switching). Based on this way of thinking, it is possible to assume that these borrowings preserve their morphemic divisibility even when they undergo adaptation into Russian. This assumption resonates with the main hypothesis of this study. Why code-switching occurs, however, is not clear, since both the forms -ing and -овать possess a semantic meaning of ‘processness’. The interaction of these morphemes may be connected with the fact that the -ing words borrowed from English are originally deverbal nouns, which is why their suffix can possess that semantic meaning of processness. However, it probably loses this semantic characteristic in the process of adaptation into Russian, and Russian derivational morphology in its turn requires a suffix such as -овать to be the only morpheme to manifest this characteristic. Thus, it is possible to conclude that in terms of the process of intra-word code-switching, it is only the form -овать that tends to possess certain semantic features denoting processness.

As previously mentioned, one of the objectives of this study was to expand Bogomolets’ typology of anglicisms (2013). Thus, while her typology includes the kinds of anglicisms based on their frequency of occurrence (occasional and widespread), my addition to it is that there may be productive and non-productive anglicisms, which stems from their capacity to interact with native Russian morphemes.

Another objective of my study was to coin a new anglicism with the suffix -инг and demonstrate the main characteristics of the process of successful adaptation of -ing borrowings into the recipient language, and determine the patterns of the interaction between the English-origin suffix -ing and the native Russian verbal morpheme -овать. While the patterns of that interaction have already been discussed, the successful adaptation of these borrowings, which implies the development of the derivational capacity, is of most importance at this point.

Thus, from my personal experience of code-switching, I recall the frequent use of English words ending in the suffix -ing while speaking Russian, some of which were never loanwords. Instead, they were occasional code-switches, which resonates with Bogomolets’ (2013) typology. In my code-switching, one such word I remember using recently is the word funding, which I adapted to correspond to Russian orthography and phonology as фандинг /ˈfandɪng/. No instances of the use of this occasional anglicism exist in the Russian National Corpus, nor is it possible to find it as an actual noun used in Russian in any context via a simple Google search. In order for this word to be introduced into Russian as a new -ing anglicism, of course, it has to be popular enough. Its productivity, on the other hand, does not depend on its popularity. In order for an -ing anglicism to become derivationally productive and interact with one of the many verbal morphemes which I focus on in this study, -овать, there has to be a specific sociocontextual meaning to which this word could belong and which is not found in the system of Russian. Since I specifically single out a semantic context as a defining characteristic here, it is important to go back to the examples analyzed above and mention that all the four of them refer to a particular social setting. Thus, in Russian митинг ‘rally’ refers to politics, демпинг ‘dumping’ refers to economics, прессинг ‘put pressure on’ refers to sports, and рейтинг ‘rating’ refers to education.  Therefore, it is possible to infer that the productivity of -ing anglicisms in their interaction with -овать is associated with whether or not there is an identical-meaning verb in Russian for an English verb whose meaning is characteristic of a particular social context.

 

Conclusion

 

In this study, I attempted to discuss the peculiarities of integration of -ing nouns into Russian. I also focused on the main principles of derivation-based interaction of these nouns with the complex Russian verbal suffix -овать. The hypothesis I proposed appears to have been proven. Thus, there seems to be word-internal code-switching on a morphemic level in play when the English suffix -ing interacts with the Russian suffix -овать. The limitations of the current study are connected with its sole focus on the morphology of the phenomena in question. Future studies will need to undertake a more comprehensive approach to loanword productivity and derivation, taking into consideration what occurs on other linguistic levels. This study is a contribution to the ongoing research on Russian-English bilingualism, specifically, loanword morphology.

 

 

Bibliography

 

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Aristova V.M. “Morfologicheskaia struktura angliiskikh slov v russkom iazyke”. Anglo-Russkiie iazykovye kontakty. L: Izdatel’stvo LGU, 1978, p. 44-47.

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Muysken, P. (2000). Bilingual speech: A typology of code-mixing. Cambridge University Press.

Natsional’nyi Korpus Russkogo Iazyka. http://ruscorpora.ru/en/search-main.html

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