PARTICLE COMPARATIVES IN SPOKEN CHUVASH

The paper deals with borrowing of the Russian comparative particle into Chuvash, a language that primarily employs fixed-case locational strategy for encoding of comparison. The study is based on elicitation data collected during field trips to Maloe Karachkino, Yadrinsky District of Chuvashia, in 2017–2018. Against the background of native Chuvash comparatives, two types of contact-induced constructions are considered: those that replicate the syntactic structure of their Russian counterparts, and those that incorporate the Russian particle into unmodified native structure. The Chuvash data are discussed in a broader theoretical and typological context. I consider factors that motivate borrowing of comparative particles, both structural (disambiguation, ease of processing, avoidance of complex morphosyntactic operations) and pragmatic (correction of the addressee’s expectations). Finally, I briefly discuss the question of which type of particle comparatives arises earlier in comparable contact situations.