Russian Borrowings in the Languages of Alaska Indigenous Peoples as a Manifestation of the Historical and Cultural Heritage of Russian America

The article aims to identify the regular patterns in the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural contacts between Russian colonists and the indigenous peoples of Alaska (the Aleuts and the Denai'na) and the impact produced by the Russian linguistic world view on Alaska indigenous peoples' languages from the perspective of the quantitative and semantic changes in the lexicon. The article presents the results of the comparative analysis of the causes and results of the penetration of Russian lexical borrowings in the Aleut and Dena'ina languages. Russian borrowings are viewed as a part of the historical and cultural heritage of Russian America. Borrowings proper, i.e. words borrowed both in their forms and meanings, were chosen as the material of the research. The authors use numerous methods, such as analysis of dictionary entries, componential analysis, thematic analysis, analysis of stylistic registers, etymological analysis, comparative analysis, and statistical analysis. The statistical analysis shows that nouns prevail over the other parts of speech (87% in Aleut and 97% in Dena'ina). The largest number of loanwords entered the thematic groups related to everyday life (Food, Cooking and Eating Utensils, Household Furnishings, Clothing and Footwear, Personal Belongings). The stylistic analysis reveals a considerable number of professional words, dialect words, and words which are now archaisms and historical words. The dialect words belong mainly to Siberian and Eastern regions where many colonists came from. The professional words denote mostly tools, hunting and fishing devices according to the daily activities of indigenous people. The archaisms and historical words were not obsolete in the times of Russian America. The research brings to light a lot of common features in the systemic impact of the Russian language on the Aleut and Dena'ina languages . similar causes of borrowings, similarities in the distribution of borrowed words among the thematic groups, a considerable number of the same Russian words borrowed into both languages. Similar tendencies were found in the process of semantic assimilation of Russian loanwords: the prevailing mechanism is metonymy and the scope of meaning is narrowed in the majority of cases. The research proves that Russian culture and the Russian language exercised profound influence on the indigenous peoples' world view and languages. The cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contacts had a lot of common features.