Chinese Pidgin Russian

Introduction

Chinese Pidgin Russian was spoken between the last decades of the 18th and the middle of the 20th century in the vast territories along the Russian-Chinese border in southern Siberia and the Russian Far East, and also in northern China in the city of Harbin and along the Chinese Far East Railway built by Russia in Manchuria in 1903. This pidgin has been extinct for several decades already, but some elderly (over 70 years old) representatives of Siberian minorities can still be considered semi-speakers of Chinese Pidgin Russian.

The Chinese Pidgin Russian Verb

Chinese Pidgin Russian has three tense-aspect markers and a zero-marker. All overt markers follow the verb:

• budu / budi (future marker),
• la (perfective marker),
• esa / esi / ju (perfective or evidential marker)

. Combinations of markers are not possible. The rare occurrences of the forms ju-la and la-ju, which could be interpreted as a combination of ju+la, do not belong to the core structure of the language.

Marker	Aspectual Class	Tense/Aspect Meaning
Ø	any (dynamic, stative)	habitual present and past imperfective, generic present
	dynamic	progressive present and past
budu/ budi	any	future
la	dynamic terminative	perfective: accomplished action; aorist
	dynamic non-terminative	perfective: action limited in time; aorist
	stative	perfective: completed change of state
esi/ esa/ ju/ jula	dynamic terminative	perfective: accomplished action with current relevance/ evidential
	dynamic non-terminative	action limited in time; repeated action
	stative	repeated action