RELATIVE CLAUSES IN MODERN SPOKEN KAZAKH

Abstract

There are 126 languages spoken in Kazakhstan (Suleimenova et al., 2007). Among these, Kazakh and Russian remain the two most commonly spoken languages, with approximately 74% of the population reporting spoken fluency in Kazakh and 94.4% reporting spoken fluency in Russian (Bureau of National Statistics, 2010). The coexistence of these two major varieties, however, has been characterized by an unequal division of power and prestige between them, the reasons for which lie in the colonial history of Kazakhstan during which Soviet policies promoting a single ‘Soviet Identity’ and the Russian language had been in force in the Kazakh steppe for a considerable period of time (Smagulova, 1996). As a result, Russian has been a socially dominant language in the region for nearly 200 years (Muhamedowa, 2009), and this linguistic domination of Russian has had its own implications for the mechanisms of contact between these languages.