LANGUAGE CONTACTS IN KALMYKIA AND THE EMERGING OF NEW LOCAL RUSSIAN VARIETY

The paper deals with contact-induced language changes in the local variety of Russian in Kalmykia. The analyzed data (spontaneous conversations in Russian and texts in Kalmyk) of Kalmyk-Russian bilinguals with a different competence in both languages. It focuses both on the interference induced by a low proficiency in Russian and on the local variety, “Kalmyk Russian”. In the speech of older speakers, a cross-linguistic transfer is obvious both in a pronunciation and in a grammar. In the speech of younger speakers, almost bilingual or even with domint Russian, there are, however, a number of traits that are characterized for local Russian. In particular, I analyze the reduplication and the way of expressing the category of mirativity. The paper argues that the evidential meaning becomes obligatory in local Kalmyk Russian. Their emerging in local Kalmyk Russian may be considered as contact-induced grammaticalization or “shared grammaticalization”.