ON SOCIOLINGUISTIC FEATURES OF TELEUT LANGUAGE (BASED ON 2013–2014 FIELD STUDIES)
The article characterizes the current state of the Teleut language, which belongs to the minority Turkic languages of Siberia. An analysis of the position of the Teleut language in existing classifications of Turkic languages is given. Fieldtrip linguistic data on Teleut collected by the authors in 2013–2014 allow to make certain conclusions about the extent of language preservation within different age groups as well as the main language use spheres. There is a significant influence of the Russian language expressing in a large number of loanwords displacing native Turkic words. Also the syntactic rules of Teleut are often being neglected as a result of Russian language impact. “The Teleut language” at the moment is a conditional term for the language of the indigenous Turkic population of Belovo district in Kemerovo region, South Siberia, Russia. In common Turkic languages classifications it is often referred to as a southern dialect of the Altai language. However, there are prerequisites to consider it as a separate language. Despite the genetic links Teleut language has with other Southern Altai dialects, forming together a national literary Altai language, Teleut has a clearly defined geographical location, which does not border on the Altai language area. It is also spoken by a separate and united ethnolinguistic community and has a separate writing and orthography, different from Altai literary language, which is of course still disputable since there are no stable literary rules for modern written Teleut. This allows us to consider the existence of a linguistic cluster comprising Altai and Teleut languages. However this thesis requires more empirical Teleut fieldtrip material with the subsequent analysis of all levels of the language system. Currently Teleut is strongly influenced by Russian, mainly its lexicon and also simple, complex and compound sentence syntax. It’s typical for Russian loanwords in Teleut to undergo morphological and phonological adaptations in accordance with the rules of Teleut language. Syntactically Teleut sentences tend to follow the SVO pattern instead of placing the finite predicate in the absolute end of clause. Complex and compound sentences have become excessively rich in Russian loan conjunctions which are broadly used in favor of traditional Teleut postpositions normally linking the clauses in Turkic languages. These changes underscore the urgent need for documentation and further analysis of the Teleut language.
Keywords: Teleut language, Turkic languages of Siberia, idioms, language cluster, language bilateral influence, borrowing, the “language or dialect” problem
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Issue: 4, 2014
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 35 — 42
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