Lost in Between: the Case of Russian Heritage Speakers

Abstract

The present paper looks at the growing population of Russian heritage speakers from a linguistic and psycholinguistic perspective. The study attempts to clarify further the notion of heritage language by comparing the linguistic performance of heritage speakers with that of monolinguals and second language learners. The amount of exposure to L1/L2, the age at which immigration to the U.S. occurred, degree of literacy in Russian, and metalinguistic awareness were among the sociolinguistic factors considered in the present study. The qualitative in-group and cross-group analyses revealed syntactic and morphological features that characterize Russian as a heritage language. The performance of heritage speakers on the narrative task differed from that of Russian monolinguals and American learners of Russian.