How VIPs and IT-professionals behave in Russian. The use of loan abbreviations in Russian analytical composites

Abstract

The current research is focused on the English N+N pattern, which is widely reported to have been borrowed into Russian under the influence of numerous compounds that have entered Russian recently. The data used for analysis include loanwords with N+N structure (e.g., бизнесмен [businessman], арт-магазин [art shop]), a considerable proportion of which are units with loan abbreviations in the leftmost (modifying) position (e.g., пиар-директор [pi’ar direktor] ‘PR director’, ВИП-места [vip-mesta] ‘VIP seats’). The paper looks at the general principles of assimilation using Krysin’s (1975) framework to understand whether it is possible to talk about changes in the Russian morphology under the influence of lexical borrowing. The analysis of the Russian N+N data to date allows for two explanations for the growing productivity of the analytical pattern. One of these is the revival of the superficially similar Russian N+N morphological pattern which had fallen out of productivity. The other explanation concerns the necessity of preserving the meaning of the loan and its conceptual value, which may otherwise be affected in the process of derivational assimilation.