Instrumental čerez in Kazakh–Russian Bilinguals: Transfer Versus Dynamical Norm

Казкенова Аимгуль Каирбековна, Ekaterina V. Rakhilina

2026

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DOI 10.1177/13670069261483980
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

Aims and Objectives: The article examines the patterns employed by Kazakh–Russian bilinguals in their use of Russian instrumental constructions with the preposition čerez —“across, through, over.” Changes and variations in the corresponding norms in Russian are also discussed. Method: The study’s starting point was the analysis of constructions with čerez from the Kazakh subcorpus of the Russian Learner Corpus, a collection of academic texts written in Russian by Kazakh bilinguals. The Almaty Corpus of the Kazakh language was used to identify the features of Kazakh instrumental constructions that may influence Russian usage. The nature of deviation from the Russian norm, along with the micro-diachronic evolution of Russian instrumental constructions, was assessed using the Russian National Corpus. These corpus findings were supplemented by a linguistic survey administered on Kazakh–Russian bilinguals (KAZ-RUS) and Russian speakers in Kazakhstan (RUS-KAZ) and Russia (RUS). Data and Analysis: The Kazakh subcorpus comprises approximately 180,000 words, from which 29 instrumental constructions with čerez were extracted. The survey involved 90 participants (30 per group). Both qualitative and quantitative analyses of corpus data and survey results were conducted. Findings: Non-standard uses of čerez in bilingual speech largely result from transfer effects due to semantic mismatches between Russian čerez and the Kazakh postposition arqyly — “through, by means of.” However, Russian itself throughout its history has repeatedly replaced one instrumental construction by another, a shift driven by extralinguistic factors—and this is still happening today. Survey data further reveals divergent construction preferences between Russian speakers in Russia versus Kazakhstan. Originality: By examining instrumental constructions, we document not only deviations in the speech of bilinguals, but also variability, which is inherent in the standards of the Russian language. Implications: Our study demonstrates that prepositional-nominal constructions can reflect the following types of linguistic variation: contact-induced, micro-diachronic, and regional.