Is contact-induced syncretism possible? A corpus-based study on bilingual verbal morphology of spoken German in Russian Siberia

This paper investigates bilingual verbs in a corpus of spoken German by L1 speakers in Russian Siberia. The study analyzes bilingual verb formations of the type hinpostupaje, which are inserted into a position corresponding to a native verb. Different kinds of infl ectional and word-formation patterns in bilingual verbs are identifi ed and discussed with reference to the contact-induced morphology of German and Russian. The study demonstrates that the bilingual verbs follow morphophonemic regularities, and that there are several traces of morphophonemic syncretism. It argues that the bilingual speakers make use of German and Russian morphology in an innovative way, which cannot be explained by classical morphology alone. The bilingual formatives identifi ed differ from the form/function equivalents in both German and Russian morphology. Further research should therefore include cognitive aspects of bilingual morphology.