Argument Case Leveling toward Genitive: An Unexpected Outcome in a Language Contact Situation

Abstract

This article contributes to the study of a productive morphosyntactic mechanism in a peculiar type of linguistic variety, the Russian language of Odessa (OdR). This variety was born as a lingua franca in the city of Odessa soon after its foundation, implying the massive acquisition of the Russian language in a nonnative way in its initial stages. Afterwards, it was transmitted to successive generations as a native variety, albeit preserving some of the initial traits. One of the most characteristic traits of OdR is the leveling of argument marking not in favor of accusative/nominative cases, as expected, but in favor of genitive marking. The use of genitive case, i.e., differential genitive case marking on subjects and objects instead of nominative/accusative, is partially present in most Slavic languages. However, in OdR, genitive case spread massively to a wide range of new syntactic positions. We show that the reason for this extension lay in (i) the confluence of different languages and dialects, which involved incomplete acquisition by many inhabitants of the city and notably Yiddish speakers, and (ii) the transmission of innovative traits through bilingual speakers, who followed specific language-internal rules operating also in Child Russian.