Russian Heritage Speakers Research Articles

Lexical interference and prediction in sentence processing among Russian heritage speakers: an individual differences approach

Lexical interference and prediction in sentence processing among Russian heritage speakers: an individual differences approach

Causal Relations and Cohesive Strategies in the Narratives of Heritage Speakers of Russian in Their Two Languages

Causal relations allow a very detailed insight into the narrative skills of children from various backgrounds; however, their contribution has not been sufficiently studied in bilingual populations. The present study examines the expression of causal relations and the linguistic forms used to encode them in narratives of bilingual children speaking Russian as the Heritage Language (HL) and Hebrew as the Societal Language (SL). Narratives were collected from 21 typically developing Russian–Hebrew bilingual children using the Frog story picture book and were coded for frequency and type of episodic components, and for causal relations focusing on enabling and motivational relations. Results showed that the number of episodic components was higher in Hebrew than in Russian. An in-depth analysis showed that more components were mentioned in the first five episodes, particularly at the onset of the story. Causal relations were similar in both languages but were differently distributed across the languages—more enabling relations in Russian stories and more motivational relations in Hebrew stories. Production of episodic components and causal relations was affected by language proficiency but not by age of onset of bilingualism (AoB). In terms of language forms, lexical chains (e.g., search~find) were the most frequent means for inferring relations. Syntactic and referential cohesion were used in dedicated episodes to convey relations in both languages. Finally, a higher number of significant correlations between narrative productivity measures, episodic components, and causal relations were found in SL/Hebrew than in HL/Russian. The study results underscore the need to understand how language-specific abilities interact with knowledge of narrative discourse construction.

Predictive Language Processing in Russian Heritage Speakers: Task Effects on Morphosyntactic Prediction in Reading

This study investigates the effect of task demands on the predictive processing of morphosyntactic cues (word class, noun/adjective gender, case, and number) in reading among Heritage Speakers of Russian (N = 29), comparing them with Russian language learners (N = 29) and monolingual Russian speakers (N = 63). Following the utility account of bilingual prediction, we hypothesized that the predictive use of morphosyntactic cues would be more evident in a less-demanding reading cloze task (Experiment 1) than in a more-challenging eye-tracking reading task (Experiment 2), and for cues that RHSs regard as more reliable (word class and number vs. gender and case cues). The results confirmed our predictions: In Experiment 1, Heritage Speakers (and L2 learners) used all cues predictively to generate the upcoming lexical item, with higher accuracy for word class and number cues compared to gender and case cues. In Experiment 2, in contrast to monolingual readers, neither Heritage Speakers nor L2 learners used gender cues on adjectives to anticipate the gender of the upcoming noun. The results are discussed in respect to the interplay between task demands, cue weight, oral fluency, and Russian literacy experience.

Use of Embedded Clauses in Heritage and Monolingual Russian

This study investigates the production of clausal embeddings by 195 Russian speakers (67 monolingually raised speakers, 68 heritage speakers in the US, and 60 heritage speakers in Germany) in different communicative situations varying by formality (formal vs. informal) and mode (spoken vs. written). Semi-spontaneous data were manually annotated for clause type and analyzed using a binomial generalized mixed-effects model. Our results show that heritage speakers of both groups and monolingually raised speakers behave alike regarding their use of embedded clauses. Specifically, all speaker groups produce embedded clauses more frequently in formal situations compared to informal situations. Mode was not found to influence the production of embedded clauses. This behavior suggests an underlying register awareness in heritage speakers of Russian. Such register awareness might be a result of the high involvement of heritage speakers with Russian. This study contributes to our understanding of linguistic outcomes of heritage speakers and highlights the influence of communicative situations on language production.

Do you say uh or uhm? A cross-linguistic approach to filler particle use in heritage and majority speakers across three languages.

Filler particles like uhm in English or ähm in German show subtle language-specific differences and their variation in form is related to socio-linguistic variables like gender. The use of fillers in a second language has been shown to differ from monolinguals' filler particle use in both frequency and form in different language contexts. This study investigates the language-specific use of filler particles by bilingual heritage speakers in both their languages, looking at the dominant majority language in the society and their minority heritage language spoken at home. This is done based on heritage Russian and German data and majority German and English data from the RUEG corpus. Language-specific fillers were extracted from the corpus and analyzed for their occurrence and segmental form. The frequency analysis suggests an influence of bilingualism, age group, and formality of the situation on the filler frequency across all languages. The number of filler particles is higher in formal, older, and bilingual speech. The form analysis reveals an effect of language and gender on the type of filler particle. The vocalic-nasal filler particles (e.g., uhm) are more frequently found in German and English and in female speech of these languages. Heritage speakers of Russian in contact with German and English show higher use of vocalic-nasal forms also in their Russian while producing similar gender related patterns to monolingual speakers in both their languages. The higher frequency of filler particles in formal situations, older speakers and in bilingual speech, is discussed related to cognitive load which is assumed to be higher in these contexts while speech style which differs between situations and social groups is also considered as explanation. The higher use of vocalic-nasal filler particles in German and English suggests language specific filler particle preferences also related to the socio-linguistic variable gender in these languages. The results from heritage speakers suggest and influence on filler particle form in their heritage language, while also revealing socio-linguistic usage patterns related to gender which are produced by heritage speakers similarly to monolinguals in their respective language.

Now they accept it, now they don’t: Acceptability judgements of nontypical multiword units in Russian as a native and a heritage language

Aims/objectives/research questions: Heritage speakers have been shown to use multiword units, which merge structural elements of both their languages, which do not conform to the combinability patterns of the monolingual variety. However, it is not clear to what extent heritage speakers actually have the knowledge of the corresponding monolingual sequences. The present study on Russian heritage speakers in Germany addresses the question of whether heritage speakers have receptive knowledge of monolingual multiword units that they do not command in production. Design/methodology/approach: The study followes a mixed methods design by combining corpus and experimental methodology. Data/analyses: First, language production data of heritage speakers from two corpora were analysed for nontypical multiword units with prepositional phrases. In the second step, these nontypical multiword units as well as their typical monolingual equivalents served as test items in an acceptability judgement task performed by 53 Russian-German heritage speakers and 56 Russian native speakers. Findings/conclusions: The results show that heritage and native speakers rate nontypical multiword units as less acceptable than their monolingual equivalents. However, the acceptability of typical and the unacceptability of nontypical expressions were more salient for native speakers, whereas heritage speakers in many cases tended to equally accept typical and nontypical items. Acceptability ratings varied according to test items in both groups, but there was no overlap between nontypical multiword units most acceptable to monolinguals and those most acceptable to heritage speakers. Originality: Our paper applies an innovative mixed method approach in investigating the receptive knowledge of monoloigual multiword units in heritage speakers. Additionally, it is one of the first studies looking at the reactions of native spekaers to novel multiword units produced by heritage speakers. Implications: The findings support the idea of a unified multilingual construction, suggesting that heritage speakers do have some receptive knowledge of monolingual multiword units but this knowledge differs from that of monolingual speakers.

Literacy instruction and lexicon size determine bilingual reading development of Russian-German children

Research question: How does Russian and German reading comprehension develop during the first 3 years of primary school in Russian heritage speakers and which factors predict performance in each language? Methodology: 40 Russian-German children were tested annually from first to third grade (age in grade 1 M = 7; 1 years). Reading was assessed with comparable Russian and German word and sentence reading comprehension tests. The Russian test was available in Cyrillic and Latin script (the latter for children who could not read Cyrillic letters). Potential predictors included lexicon size in Russian and German and rapid automatized naming (RAN) of numbers (both assessed in primary school). Other factors were assessed in kindergarten, that is, nonverbal reasoning and, derived from a parents’ questionnaire, their socioeconomic status and language input in the family. Data and analysis: Linear regressions were used to compare the development of Russian and German. Stepwise regression analyses identified predictors for reading comprehension in each language. Findings: German reading ability improved faster than that of Russian, likely due to the increasing amount of German input outside the family, literacy instruction in German at school, and the large variance in Russian literacy abilities. Children who could read Cyrillic script, who likely received some form of Russian literacy instruction, and who had a larger Russian lexicon size exhibited better reading performance. These results are discussed regarding the divergent attainment trajectories. Decisive factors for German were German lexicon size and RAN. Originality: This longitudinal study tracked Russian and German reading development over 3 years in primary school, assessed Russian reading in Cyrillic and Latin scripts, and identified predictors for bilingual reading development in both languages. Implications: To become proficient readers in their heritage language, children need to have a substantial lexicon size and receive literacy instruction.

Intonational Features of Spontaneous Narrations in Monolingual and Heritage Russian in the U.S.—An Exploration of the RUEG Corpus

This article presents RuPro, a new corpus resource of prosodically annotated speech by Russian heritage speakers in the U.S. and monolingually raised Russian speakers. The corpus contains data elicited in formal and informal communicative situations, by male/female and adolescent/adult speakers. The resource is presented with its architecture and annotation, and it is shown how it is used for the analysis of intonational features of spontaneous mono- and bilingual Russian speech. The analyses investigate the length of intonation phrases, types and number of pitch accents, and boundary tones. It emerges that the speaker groups do not differ in the inventory of pitch accents and boundary tones or in the relative frequency of these tonal events. However, they do differ in the length of intonation phrases (IPs), with heritage speakers showing shorter IPs also in the informal communicative situation. Both groups also differ concerning the number of pitch accents used on content words, with heritage speakers using more pitch accents than monolingually raised speakers. The results are discussed with respect to register differentiation and differences in prosodic density across both speaker groups.

Do Different Majority Languages Lead to Different Intonational Grammars? A Case Study of Yes/No-Questions in Heritage Russian

Abstract Based on production data of yes/no-questions (YNQ), our research shows that the intonational grammar of YNQ s of heritage speakers of Russian in the United States and in Germany differs from the one of monolingual speakers in various aspects, namely considering the number of additional pitch accents on subjects and objects, the preference for H* on subjects, and, in the case of heritage speakers in the United States, an increased use of upstepped accents on the verb, a lower rate of H%, and a different alignment of rising pitch accents in intransitive questions. The differences can be categorized as differences of phonetic implementation and frequency of use. They cannot easily be attributed to transfer from the majority languages. Rather, the increased use of upsteps on the verb can be characterized as a compensation strategy to make the pitch accent on the verb the most prominent, even if an earlier accent has been realized on the subject.

Cross-linguistic influence meets diminished input: A comparative study of heritage Russian in contact with Hebrew and English

While it is known that heritage speakers diverge from the homeland baseline, there is still no consensus on the mechanisms triggering this divergence. We investigate the impact of two potential factors shaping adult heritage language (HL) grammars: (1) cross-linguistic influence (CLI), originally proposed for second language acquisition (SLA), and (2) background factors associated with input. To assess the role of CLI and input we compared two groups of adult heritage speakers of Russian ( n = 66) with two typologically distinct societal languages (SLs), Hebrew and American English. Their production was evaluated for three morphosyntactic phenomena: adjective–noun agreement, accusative case morphology, and numerical phrases. Using self-rating and baseline vocabulary tasks as proficiency measures, we conducted controlled experiments to assess mastery of the target phenomena. Our results show that, while CLI is the main mechanism behind HL grammar maintenance, increased input and proficiency can modulate performance in the absence of grammatical similarities between the HL and SL. An analysis of non-target responses revealed systematic patterns, including reliance on default, or unmarked, forms in both groups, in line with previous research. These findings contribute to the literature on the mechanisms of HL grammar formation and maintenance.

Retratos sociais e de fala como um método de estudo de russo de herança: emigrantes russos idosos em Harbin e seus descendentes

ABSTRACT This article aims to describe the Russian heritage speakers in Harbin, elderly emigrants and their descendants, using the social and speech portraiting method. The Russian diaspora in China arose in the late 19th century when the Chinese-Eastern railway was built – a joint Russian-Chinese project. After 1952, a mass exodus of the Russian population from China began: repatriation or emigration to Australia, the USA and Brazil. In the early 21st century, less than ten members of the Russian diaspora remained in Harbin. The specific nature of the Russian emigrant language in Harbin was described through the social and speech portraiting of the heritage speakers’ identities. This method may be used to analyze the language of emigrants in different countries, to reveal the unique and universal processes in it. Additionally, the article describes strategies and tactics for gathering language material from elderly informants.

Lexical production and innovation in child and adult Russian Heritage speakers dominant in English and Hebrew

AbstractThe present study investigated lexical production and innovation of 202 participants across six groups: child and adult heritage speakers of Russian, dominant in Hebrew or American English, and monolingual Russian-speaking children and adults. Understanding quantitative performance across these six groups was intended to provide a comprehensive perspective on heritage language (HL) development, while comparing the participants’ qualitative non-target response patterns would elucidate the organization of the HL lexicon. We assessed the production of Russian nouns and verbs using a naming task. We then considered the effects of input at the societal and lexical levels (focusing on word frequency and age of acquisition). Our findings are discussed in terms of accounts of HL developmental trajectories: monolingual-like trajectory, frozen lexical development, attrition, and new language variety in a contact situation. The results presented no evidence for attrition, while elements of the other three trajectories were found in our quantitative and qualitative analyses.

Bilingual vs. Monolingual Readers: Insights from Eye-Tracking Data

The present eye-tracking study examines silent and oral text reading by Russian-German bilinguals of two age groups (9-10 and 15-16 years) and compares it with their monolingual peers. The bilingual sample represents so-called heritage speakers of Russian who know both the Latin and the Cyrillic script. The paper relies on two global eye movement measures – the averaged total fixation count and the averaged total fixation duration per token – and analyses the effects of three factors: <em>language profile, age</em>, and <em>reading mode</em>. In both age groups, bilinguals made a higher number of fixations per token and fixated the token longer than their peers. This observation holds for both languages and reading modes. However, the gap between bilinguals and their peers was much larger in Russian, and interindividual variation was greater in Russian than in German. The better results in German can be explained by its status as the primary medium of instruction and its dominance in everyday literacy, but the prolonged information processing in both languages suggests the activation of both linguistic systems and their mental lexicon, even if only one language has been triggered by the task. Notably, general language command, more specifically, lexical knowledge and reading experience play a decisive role in reading acquisition and behaviour. These insights should be considered by the educational practice at school as well as by scientific research in multilingualism.

Israeli Russian: Case morphology in a bilingual context

The current study investigates case morphology development in a bilingual context. It is aimed at investigating potential mechanisms driving divergences in heritage language grammars as compared to the baseline monolingual standards. For the purposes of the study, 95 bilingual and monolingual children and adults were compared. Bilinguals residing in Israel acquired Russian from birth, while the age of onset of Hebrew varied. The participants completed a production task eliciting accusative case inflections. Both child and adult heritage speakers of Russian with early age of onset of Hebrew (before the age of 5) showed divergences in the production of the accusative case inflections as compared to monolingual Russian-speaking controls (adult and child), whereas grammars of Israeli heritage Russian speakers with later ages of onset of Hebrew, after the age of 5, were found to be intact. On the basis of Russian in contact with Hebrew, the study discusses how heritage language grammars differ from the baseline grammars of monolingual speakers and which mechanisms are associated with heritage language ultimate attainment. The effects of the age of onset and cross-linguistic influence from the dominant societal language are discussed as potential factors affecting the acquisition / maintenance of linguistic phenomena in heritage language grammars.

Factors Affecting Language Proficiency in Heritage Language: The Case of Young Russian Heritage Speakers in Spain

Abstract This study focuses on the issue of language proficiency attainment among young heritage speakers of Russian living in Spain and examines factors that have been claimed to promote heritage language proficiency, namely, age, gender, age of onset to L2, quantity of exposure and family language use. A group of 30 Russian-Spanish-Catalan trilingual children aged 7–11 participated in the study. In order to measure heritage language proficiency (L1 Russian), oral narratives were elicited. The results demonstrated a significant relationship between L1 proficiency and three sociolinguistic variables (age of onset to L2, quantity of exposure and family language use). Additionally, the multiply regression model demonstrated that the only significant variable affecting language proficiency was family language use and it accounted only for 33% of the variation of children’s language proficiency. The study raises the question about what are the other, yet unknown factors, which can affect heritage language proficiency.

Verbal working memory assessment in Russian-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals

In Brazil, the learning of a second language (L2) by native Brazilian Portuguese speakers has been extensively explored, but studies on language processing and language interaction among bilinguals are quite recent. The late bilingualism of the first-generation immigrants has been studied mainly from the perspective of their difficulties in learning Brazilian Portuguese. Brazil has numerous communities of heritage speakers of many languages such as Japanese, German, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian. However, the number of studies that focus on the bilingual speech of heritage speakers in Brazil is also quite limited. The aim of the current study is to evaluate the working memory in Russian-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals as a function of the language and type of bilingualism. For this purpose, 49 first-generation Russophone immigrants and 28 older Russian heritage speakers, all residing in Brazil, were tested in Russian and Portuguese using a Month-Ordering task. We found that the working memory scores of the first-generation Russophone immigrants were not statistically different between both languages, but the median working memory score of the older Russian heritage speakers in Russian was 1.5-fold lower than in Portuguese. As next steps, we plan to verify the relation between the working memory capacity and narrative production abilities of the older Russian heritage-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals in their heritage and societal languages.

Heritage languages and the ʻmultilingual boostʼ: intercomprehension skills of Russian and Polish heritage speakers in Germany

Abstract The article focuses on whether and to which extent heritage bilinguals make use of their heritage language while developing receptive skills in unknown languages which are either related to the majority language or the heritage language. Thirty four adolescent heritage speakers of Russian and Polish and a control group of thirty three German monolinguals were first exposed to a text in Swedish. The monolingual control group was matched with regard to age, educational background, foreign languages learned at school as well as proficiency in English. All participants had to determine the parts of speech of ten items from the text, translate them into German, and extract the main pieces of information from the text. In a second step, the heritage speakers completed a similar task with an unknown Slavic target language (Serbian). The results revealed no bilingual advantage of the heritage speakers over the monolinguals in the Swedish task. Furthermore, they scored lower in the Serbian trial. We treat this as evidence that access to the heritage language as a resource for solving these tasks is limited compared to the majority language and English which might be due to lesser metalinguistic knowledge about structures of the heritage language.

Code-switching Between English and Russian with Russian Heritage Speakers, Born and Raised in Russian-speaking Families in the USA

Code-switching is one of the major areas in the field of Bilingualism. Code-switching describes the processes of switching between languages among those who know and speak more than one language. This article will analyze the code-switching between Russian and English in Russian heritage speakers. They are first year students at a large Midwestern university, born in the U.S. to Russian-speaking parents. They have been taking university Russian classes for two semesters. The students were asked to record two five-minute dialogues with their parents who also speak Russian and English. There was neither instruction to use solely Russian, nor the use of English was prohibited. The goal of the research was to count and analyze the instances of code-switching between Russian and English, and prove or reject the hypothesis that there would be fewer code-switching instances in the dialogue devoted to a family holiday versus the dialogue devoted to university classes. The dialogue topics were furnished beforehand, however, no preparation was asked. The speech was asked to be spontaneous and natural. The findings proved the hypothesis that code-switching instances in the first dialogue were less frequent, so the students were mainly using only one language - Russian - without switching to English very often. The second dialogue revealed more code-switching instances as was initially supposed. Conclusions and directions for future research are presented.

Collocations and near-native competence: Lexical strategies of heritage speakers of Russian

This paper presents an exploratory study on the use of frequency-based probabilistic word combinations in Heritage Russian. The data used in the study are drawn from three small corpora of narratives, representing the language of Russian heritage speakers from three different dominant-language backgrounds, namely German, Finnish, and American English. The elicited narratives are based on video clips that the participants saw before the recording. Since the current study is based on a relatively small corpus, we conducted a manual corpus-based analysis of the heritage corpora and an automated analysis of the baseline (monolingual) corpus to investigate the differences between the heritage and monolingual language varieties. We hypothesize that heritage speakers deploy fewer probabilistic strategies in language production compared with native speakers and that their active knowledge of and access to ready-to-use multiword units are restricted compared with native speakers. When they cannot access a single lexical item or a collocation, heritage speakers are able to tap both into the resources of the dominant language and the resources of their home language. The connection to the dominant language results in transfer-based non-standard word combinations; when heritage speakers tap into the resources of their home language, they produce unattested in the monolingual variety, “heritage” collocations, many of which are nevertheless grammatically legitimate.

Morphosyntactic Knowledge in Late Second Language Learners and Heritage Speakers of Russian

The current study pursues two goals. First, it establishes developmental trajectories in the acquisition of 10 morphosyntactic features of Russian by American learners, using a grammaticality judgment task (GJT), an offline test of morphosyntactic knowledge that allows for direct comparison of native and nonnative performance through a highly controlled set of materials. Second, it compares the performance of late second language learners and heritage speakers (early learners) of Russian matched in global proficiency as established by the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), and ranging from Intermediate to Superior proficiency. The study demonstrates that heritage speakers outperform late second language learners on most, but not all the morphosyntactic features tested in the GJT. These findings shed new light on the development of nonnative grammatical knowledge in early and late learners of Russian, and will inform Russian language curriculum development.