Morphology of Chinese Pidgin Russian

Roman Shapiro (luomaru@yahoo.com), Moscow State University

Linguistics subdiscipline: contact linguistics / morphology Keywords: pidgin, morphology, Russian

The last few decades have witnessed a trend towards generalisation and search for

universals in contact linguistics. However specific research is still focused on pidgins, creoles and mixed languages based on Western European languages, such as Portuguese, French or English. Unlike many Western-based pidgins, the understudied Chinese Pidgin Russian (CPR), which has existed at the Chinese Russian border since at least the 18th century, uses a typical inflecting language as its lexifier. Thus the study of CPR morphology allows seeing how this feature is treated in contact languages. It is possible to draw a rough formal distinction in CPR between verbs and non-verbs (among notional, i.e. non-syntactic words). This morphological distinction is supported by the semantic (verbs denote actions or states, while non-verbs denote semantic roles or modifiers) and syntactic criteria (verbs tend to take the last position in the sentence). CPR has neither declension nor conjugation. Most verbs are taken from Russian in the imperative singular form. Russian imperatives mainly use the suffix -i or -j, so -i/-j has become the verbal marker in CPR. Pidgin forms tend to reproduce Russian imperatives correctly, which means that they were borrowed as a whole: the Russian rules for adding the imperative suffix are quite complicated. However there do exist some forms that were created within CPR, as they are different from any Russian form: poguli ‘have a walk’ cf. Russian imperative pogul’aj; iskaj ‘search’ cf. Russian išči. The few verbs of non-Russian origin also use this pattern (kan’trami ‘kill’ < Chinese 砍头儿吗 kăn tóur ma ‘cut one’s head’). Another widespread verbal suffix is -la, similar to, but not identical with the perfective final particle. Other verbal forms must have been borrowed at the post-pidgin stage, as they are not used in early sources. Modal verbs form a special subgroup, as they do not end in -i and can be negated only by ne/ni, while other verbs can also take netu as their negation. Most non-verbs derived from Russian nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs end in -a. The sources of the -a suffix include the Russian nominal, adjectival and adverbial endings/suffixes -a, -o and -e (often neutralised into a schwa) and the Russian consonant-final forms, to which an epenthetic -a is added in CPR. CPR personal pronouns form a semantic subclass of non-verbs. Most personal pronouns originate from Russian possessive pronouns. This fact is explained by the influence of the 17th century Russian-English pidgin and the typology of pidgins in general or pidgins with a Chinese component, as well as by levelling processes. Personal pronouns are also used as modifiers, i.e. in the function of possessive pronouns. CPR has aspectual (future, past, perfective and actualisation) and negative particles, all of which take the final position in the sentence. They all stem from Russian / Chinese verbs, however their final position (which is a quite strict rule rather than a tendency, as with verbs) and functional similarity with Chinese particles make one regard them as a category of CPR words different from verbs. The present study has demonstrated that CPR did not inherit any inflecting features from Russian; however it retained and even emphasised the Russian formal distinction between verbs and non-verbs. This study has also shown that CPR developed a Chinese-type system of final particles, though they are not expected in universal creole systems (Thompson 1961).