Verbal borrowings in Russian social media: a diachronic corpus study

Abstract

This study examines the adaptation of English-derived verbal concepts related to social media in Russian, focusing on their orthographic, morphological, and semantic integration within online discourse. Based on a diachronic corpus of over 41,000 tweets from 2013 to 2024, the analysis employs computational tools to explore 21 English source concepts, such as ‘to post’, ‘to like’, and ‘to follow’, and their Russian equivalents. The findings reveal that while borrowed forms exhibit greater lemma diversity, their usage frequencies are comparable to those of translated variants. Morphological adaptation shows a growing preference for the suffix -ну- in the formation of perfective verbs. The most fully integrated borrowings display a wide range of meaningful affixal variants. Furthermore, the choice and integration of verbal concepts are influenced by a combination of semantic, social, and platform-specific factors, including users’ prior experience with other social media interfaces. These findings underscore social media as a dynamic environment for lexical innovation in Russian.