Nina Dobrushina
Biographic Data
| ID | 78296 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nina Dobrushina |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nina |
| FAMILY NAME | Dobrushina |
| SIGNATURE | DOBRUSHINA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Research University Higher School of Economics |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4559-4274 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Evaluation between grammar and context
This paper analyzes how the grammatical meaning of qualitative evaluation is developed in optatives which denote blessings and curses. Based on the analysis of several Turkic forms and several Russian constructions, this study distinguishes the grammatical meaning of evaluation from a pragmatic implication arising in particular contexts. It shows that grammatical items that have evaluative usages often exhibit a certain “fluidity”, with positive …
Language ideology in an endogamous society
Studies of multilingual systems found in Indigenous small-scale communities often assume that exogamous marriages are the norm in such societies and contribute to their linguistic diversity. This paper is an account of the language ideology of endogamous societies in rural highland Daghestan (Northeast Caucasus). By studying language policing and language choice in infrequent mixed marriages, the paper uncovers the beliefs that support endogamy a…
Spoken Corpora of Slavic Languages
Spoken corpora are collections of transcribed and annotated audio and /or video recordings of languages or language varieties. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of 51 spoken corpora currently available for Slavic languages and dialects, in particular Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Trasianka, Ukrainian/Rusyn. We identify three groups of corpora according to the type of lect: corpora of sta…
Can Recall Data Be Trusted? Evaluating Reliability of Interview Data on Traditional Multilingualism in Highland Daghestan
In this article, we address the issue of reliability of quantitative data on multilingualism of the past obtained as recall data. More specifically, we investigate whether the interviewees' assessments of the language repertoires of their late relatives (indirect data) provide results that are quantitatively similar to those obtained from the people of the same age range themselves (direct data). The empirical data we use come from an ongoing fie…
The rise of a lingua franca
Aims and objectives: In Dagestan, Russian is the language of education, urban way of life, and upward social mobility, and the means of communication between speakers of different languages. This is a result of a quick and drastic change. At the end of the 19th century, Russian was spoken by less than 1% of the population. The aim of this paper is to understand how such rapid spread of Russian as an L2 became possible. Approach: The study uses qu…
The speakers of minority languages are more multilingual
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The paper tests the hypothesis that the larger the population of language speakers, the smaller the number of second languages mastered by these speakers. Design/methodology/approach: We match the size of the population of 29 Dagestanian languages and the number of second languages spoken by the speakers of these languages from 54 villages, and run a Poisson mixed effects regression model that predi…
Negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs
Complement clauses of verbs of fear often contain expletive negation, which is negative marking without negative meaning. Expletive negation in fear-complements regularly co-occurs with non-indicative moods, such as subjunctive, conjunctive, or conditional. The aim of this paper is to provide a diachronic explanation for the phenomenon of expletive negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs. Based on data from various languages, I will show tha…
Lingua francas as lexical donors
Lingua francas as lexical donors
This article looks at the correlation between the use of a langugage as L2 and the amount of lexical material borrowed from it. Our data come from the highlands of Daghestan. By matching loanword counts with data on multilingualism, the study quantitatively supports the suggestion that lexical borrowing from a lingua franca is more intense than from other languages in a multilingual repertoire (Brown 1996, 2011). Brown hypothesizes that the impor…
A typology of small-scale multilingualism
Aims: The paper aims at providing an exhaustive overview of studies of small-scale multilingualism, a type of language ecology typical of-but not exclusive to-indigenous communities with small numbers of speakers. We identify the similarities and differences among situations of such multilingualism, which lay the foundations for a future typology of this kind of language ecology. Approach and data: We outline the importance of language ideologies…
Dialect loss in the Russian North
We analyze the dynamics of dialect loss in a cluster of villages in rural northern Russia based on a corpus of transcribed interviews, the Ustja River Basin Corpus. Eleven phonological and morphological variables are analyzed across 33 speakers born between 1922 and 1996 in a series of logistic regression models. We propose three characteristics for a comparison of the rate of loss of different variables: initial level, steepness, and turning poi…
Gendered Multilingualism in highland Daghestan
The paper traces the level of bilingualism in several highland villages of Daghestan (Northeast Caucasus) through the twentieth century. We show that historically, men were more multilingual than women, but this was not true to the same extent for all languages. Highlanders’ repertoires suggest a correlation between the social function of the second language and the degree to which its command was gendered. We also explore the dynamics of multili…
Avar as a Lingua Franca
International audience
Electronic Database of Variation
The paper is an overview of the Repository of Variationist Research (https://vastry.ru/), an online storage and interactive plotting tool for quantitative sociolinguistic data. The paper describes a number of sociolinguistic experiments from which the data come and outlines the Repository and the toolkit it provides to its users
Contact-induced usages of volitional moods in East Caucasian languages
Aims and hypothesis: The aim of this article is to introduce a case of syntactic borrowing. I test the hypothesis that the uses of volitional forms (optative, imperative, hortative and jussive) in complement clauses of the verbs of wish and in purpose clauses in East Caucasian languages evolve under the influence of Azerbaijanian. Design/methodology/approach and data and analysis: The data of 13 languages are considered in the paper. To prove tha…
Russian subjunctive as habitual
International audience
How to study multilingualism of the past
Reconstructing contact situations for an unwritten language is a challenging task, as the sociolinguistic past of such speech communities is very rarely documented. The paper describes research in which a method of retrospective family interviews is applied, where respondents' recollections about recent multilingual past and, in particular, about the language repertoires of their elder relatives, are converted into quantitative data. It is a case…
Subjunctive complement clauses in Russian
What is the jussive for? A study of third person commands in six Caucasian Languages
International audience
A typology of small-scale multilingualism
Aims: The paper aims at providing an exhaustive overview of studies of small-scale multilingualism, a type of language ecology typical of-but not exclusive to-indigenous communities with small numbers of speakers. We identify the similarities and differences among situations of such multilingualism, which lay the foundations for a future typology of this kind of language ecology. Approach and data: We outline the importance of language ideologies…
How to study multilingualism of the past
Reconstructing contact situations for an unwritten language is a challenging task, as the sociolinguistic past of such speech communities is very rarely documented. The paper describes research in which a method of retrospective family interviews is applied, where respondents' recollections about recent multilingual past and, in particular, about the language repertoires of their elder relatives, are converted into quantitative data. It is a case…
Gendered Multilingualism in highland Daghestan
The paper traces the level of bilingualism in several highland villages of Daghestan (Northeast Caucasus) through the twentieth century. We show that historically, men were more multilingual than women, but this was not true to the same extent for all languages. Highlanders’ repertoires suggest a correlation between the social function of the second language and the degree to which its command was gendered. We also explore the dynamics of multili…
Dialect loss in the Russian North
We analyze the dynamics of dialect loss in a cluster of villages in rural northern Russia based on a corpus of transcribed interviews, the Ustja River Basin Corpus. Eleven phonological and morphological variables are analyzed across 33 speakers born between 1922 and 1996 in a series of logistic regression models. We propose three characteristics for a comparison of the rate of loss of different variables: initial level, steepness, and turning poi…
What is the jussive for? A study of third person commands in six Caucasian Languages
International audience
Subjunctive complement clauses in Russian
What is the jussive for? A study of third person commands in six Caucasian Languages
International audience
How to study multilingualism of the past
Reconstructing contact situations for an unwritten language is a challenging task, as the sociolinguistic past of such speech communities is very rarely documented. The paper describes research in which a method of retrospective family interviews is applied, where respondents' recollections about recent multilingual past and, in particular, about the language repertoires of their elder relatives, are converted into quantitative data. It is a case…
Russian subjunctive as habitual
International audience
Contact-induced usages of volitional moods in East Caucasian languages
Aims and hypothesis: The aim of this article is to introduce a case of syntactic borrowing. I test the hypothesis that the uses of volitional forms (optative, imperative, hortative and jussive) in complement clauses of the verbs of wish and in purpose clauses in East Caucasian languages evolve under the influence of Azerbaijanian. Design/methodology/approach and data and analysis: The data of 13 languages are considered in the paper. To prove tha…
Electronic Database of Variation
The paper is an overview of the Repository of Variationist Research (https://vastry.ru/), an online storage and interactive plotting tool for quantitative sociolinguistic data. The paper describes a number of sociolinguistic experiments from which the data come and outlines the Repository and the toolkit it provides to its users
Dialect loss in the Russian North
We analyze the dynamics of dialect loss in a cluster of villages in rural northern Russia based on a corpus of transcribed interviews, the Ustja River Basin Corpus. Eleven phonological and morphological variables are analyzed across 33 speakers born between 1922 and 1996 in a series of logistic regression models. We propose three characteristics for a comparison of the rate of loss of different variables: initial level, steepness, and turning poi…
Gendered Multilingualism in highland Daghestan
The paper traces the level of bilingualism in several highland villages of Daghestan (Northeast Caucasus) through the twentieth century. We show that historically, men were more multilingual than women, but this was not true to the same extent for all languages. Highlanders’ repertoires suggest a correlation between the social function of the second language and the degree to which its command was gendered. We also explore the dynamics of multili…
Avar as a Lingua Franca
International audience
The rise of a lingua franca
Aims and objectives: In Dagestan, Russian is the language of education, urban way of life, and upward social mobility, and the means of communication between speakers of different languages. This is a result of a quick and drastic change. At the end of the 19th century, Russian was spoken by less than 1% of the population. The aim of this paper is to understand how such rapid spread of Russian as an L2 became possible. Approach: The study uses qu…
The speakers of minority languages are more multilingual
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The paper tests the hypothesis that the larger the population of language speakers, the smaller the number of second languages mastered by these speakers. Design/methodology/approach: We match the size of the population of 29 Dagestanian languages and the number of second languages spoken by the speakers of these languages from 54 villages, and run a Poisson mixed effects regression model that predi…
Negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs
Complement clauses of verbs of fear often contain expletive negation, which is negative marking without negative meaning. Expletive negation in fear-complements regularly co-occurs with non-indicative moods, such as subjunctive, conjunctive, or conditional. The aim of this paper is to provide a diachronic explanation for the phenomenon of expletive negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs. Based on data from various languages, I will show tha…
Lingua francas as lexical donors
Lingua francas as lexical donors
This article looks at the correlation between the use of a langugage as L2 and the amount of lexical material borrowed from it. Our data come from the highlands of Daghestan. By matching loanword counts with data on multilingualism, the study quantitatively supports the suggestion that lexical borrowing from a lingua franca is more intense than from other languages in a multilingual repertoire (Brown 1996, 2011). Brown hypothesizes that the impor…
A typology of small-scale multilingualism
Aims: The paper aims at providing an exhaustive overview of studies of small-scale multilingualism, a type of language ecology typical of-but not exclusive to-indigenous communities with small numbers of speakers. We identify the similarities and differences among situations of such multilingualism, which lay the foundations for a future typology of this kind of language ecology. Approach and data: We outline the importance of language ideologies…
Spoken Corpora of Slavic Languages
Spoken corpora are collections of transcribed and annotated audio and /or video recordings of languages or language varieties. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of 51 spoken corpora currently available for Slavic languages and dialects, in particular Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Trasianka, Ukrainian/Rusyn. We identify three groups of corpora according to the type of lect: corpora of sta…
Can Recall Data Be Trusted? Evaluating Reliability of Interview Data on Traditional Multilingualism in Highland Daghestan
In this article, we address the issue of reliability of quantitative data on multilingualism of the past obtained as recall data. More specifically, we investigate whether the interviewees' assessments of the language repertoires of their late relatives (indirect data) provide results that are quantitatively similar to those obtained from the people of the same age range themselves (direct data). The empirical data we use come from an ongoing fie…
Language ideology in an endogamous society
Studies of multilingual systems found in Indigenous small-scale communities often assume that exogamous marriages are the norm in such societies and contribute to their linguistic diversity. This paper is an account of the language ideology of endogamous societies in rural highland Daghestan (Northeast Caucasus). By studying language policing and language choice in infrequent mixed marriages, the paper uncovers the beliefs that support endogamy a…
Evaluation between grammar and context
This paper analyzes how the grammatical meaning of qualitative evaluation is developed in optatives which denote blessings and curses. Based on the analysis of several Turkic forms and several Russian constructions, this study distinguishes the grammatical meaning of evaluation from a pragmatic implication arising in particular contexts. It shows that grammatical items that have evaluative usages often exhibit a certain “fluidity”, with positive …
Linguistics (17 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (10 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (6 works) · Multilingualism (5 works)