Instrumental čerez in Kazakh-Russian bilinguals: Transfer VS. dynamical norm

International Journal of Bilingualism. 2026. Vol. 6. P. 1–16.

Rakhilina E. V., Kazkenova A.

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.

Keywords: русский язык, Russian language, сравнительные конструкции, constructions, грамматика конструкций, instrumentality, редупликация, adpositions, слова-интенсификаторы, конструктикон, Kazakh language, Kazakh–Russian bilingualism

Publication based on the results of: Linguistic and cognitive diversity in formal models, computer tools, and educational resources (2025)