Anneli Sarhimaa, Syntactic transfer, contact-induced change, and the evolution of bilingual mixed codes: Focus on Karelian-Russian language alternation. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 1999. Pp. 340.

Abstract

The data that underlie Anneli Sarhimaa's excellent study were gathered between 1989 and 1992, under restrictive field circumstances. Visits to Karelia required what the author terms “intricate co-operation with academic and public authorities in Russia” (p. 76), and the duration of any stay was limited to a few weeks. From her home base in Finland, she made short visits to three Central Karelian villages in the summers of 1989 and 1991, working with additional Central Karelian speakers resident in the capital city of Karelia in the winters of 1990 and 1991; in 1992, a two-week trip allowed her to work in nine Tver Karelian villages in central Russia. That these compressed visits produced 30-some hours of taped interviews and 31 sets of translation-task data (15 Central Karelian, 16 Tver Karelian) does credit to her careful advance planning; the frankness with which she points to limitations in the resulting data does equal credit to her scholarly scrupulousness.