Reflexives in dependent clauses in Modern Nanai: Contact-induced structural change and language attrition

The paper deals with the use of reflexive markers in dependent clauses in Nanai (Tungusic). V. A. Avrorin describes this system in the following way in his “Grammar of the Nanai language” (1959): Light reflexives in dependent clauses behave consistently as long-distance reflexives, and heavy reflexives behave as local ones. However, modern field data show a different picture, that of a system with a very limited range of long-distance contexts. The hypothesis advanced in this paper is that a rapid grammatical change takes place and that this change is motivated by sociolinguistic factors, namely contact influence of Russian and language decay.