2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

A Comparative Study on the Status of the Russian Language Spokenas a Lingua Franca in Central Asian Countries Today

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19520324
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Linguistics
Research Institution	Tohoku University
Principal Investigator	YANAGIDA Kenji Tohoku University, 東北アジア研究センター, 准教授 (90241562)
Project Period (FY)	2007 – 2009
Keywords	社会言語学 / 中央アジア / ロシア語 / 多言語使用 / リングァフランカ
Research Abstract	Russian dialects spoken by various peoples in Central Asia today have certain common characteristics indifferently to genealogical and typological property of their native languages, which suggests a history of pidginization and creolization undergone by the Russian language in this area. On the other hand, there will be no language except Russian which can serve as a common language for all the countries and peoples in Central Asia in the future either. If the Russian language education continues to be so poor both in quality and in quantity in spite of its necessity as it is today as a result of the economic difficulties of Central Asian countries, it may proceed to the "real" process of pidginization.