Borrowings in the Yukaghir language: Yakut derivational affix -laa in the speech of the Tundra Yukaghirs

The article is devoted to a relevant and under-researched topic of foreign language influence on the Yukaghir language, spoken by one of the smallest ethnic groups in the northeastern part of Siberia, with fewer than 50 speakers, primarily residing in the Low Kolyma and Upper Kolyma regions of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). Recent studies have shown that in the Tundra Yukaghir speech, there is a small group of Russian words, the borrowing of which would not have been possible without involvement of the affixal morpheme -laa from Yakut as an intermediary language. It has been established that the use of borrowed Yakut allomorphs -laa, -naa, -daa, -taa in Yukaghir aligns with the final sound of the stem, as in the source language. Based on the degree of assimilation, non-adapted, partially adapted (with assimilation of either the root or the affix), and fully adapted forms with -laa are distinguished, some of which are relatively frequent in the speech of native speakers and are integrated into the grammatical system of the recipient language. From a structuralmorphological perspective, verbs, whether borrowed as complete forms or created by analogy with Yakut word-formation patterns, include nouns, imperative verb forms, and an interjection. The author provides a chronological-frequency analysis, according to which verbs with -laa should be considered phenomena of the Soviet period and the speech strategy of one speaker, although a small number of such lexemes are reflected in a bilingual dictionary. The assimilation of the Yakut affix-laa became possible due to the widespread multilingualism among the Yukaghirs and the structural similarity between the Yukaghir and Yakut languages.

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