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Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism: Online-First Articles

Heritage speaker pragmatics

The interplay of Russian and Hebrew in request formation

ORCID logo | University of Bar-Ilan
ORCID logo | University of Bar-Ilan

The current study investigated request production in Russian as a Heritage language (HL), with a special focus on the role of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) of the majority societal language (here SL-Hebrew) and Age of Onset of Bilingualism (AOB). Ninety-seven adult participants were recruited in four groups: three groups of Russian-Hebrew bilinguals with various AOBs of SL-Hebrew – before the age of 5 (n = 32), between the ages of 5–13 (n = 20), after the age of 13 (n = 19) – and a control group of monolingual Russian speakers (n = 26). The study elicited 20 requests in formal and informal contexts through oral role-plays. The results indicate that heritage speakers acquire the basics of prototypical Russian request strategies across various social contexts. The results also show effects of CLI and AOB in the pragmatic competence of HL-speakers. When faced with linguistic difficulties to express requests, HL speakers resort to the use of compensatory strategies leading to the creation of novel structures. These novel structures are a combination of conventions that are characteristic of the Russian acquired in childhood and transfer from the dominant SL. The study makes an important contribution to the understanding of HL pragmatic development by investigating the effects of CLI and AOB.

Keywords: heritage language pragmatics, Russian, Hebrew, requests, cross-linguistic influence, age of onset of bilingualism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background and research questions
    • 2.1Effects of CLI and diminished/divergent input on HL formation
    • 2.2Requests in HSs: CLI and diminished input
    • 2.3Requests in Russian and Hebrew: Differences and similarities
      • 2.3.1Forms of address
      • 2.3.2Syntactic structures, modals and particles
      • 2.3.3Lexical downgraders
    • 2.4Research questions and hypotheses
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials
      • 3.2.1Oral pragmatic elicitation task
      • 3.2.2Coding schemata
      • 3.2.3Procedure
      • 3.2.4Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1The use of address forms
    • 4.2Morphosyntactic realization of requests
      • 4.2.1Clause type
      • 4.2.2The use of modals (personal vs. impersonal)
      • 4.2.3The use of morphosyntactic particles ne, by and li
    • 4.3Lexical strategies
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Divergence in the use of forms of address
    • 5.2Divergence in morphosyntactic realization of requests
    • 5.3Divergence in lexical strategies
    • 5.4Limitations of the current study and future research
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Data availability
  • Competing interests
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Appendices
    • Appendix 1.Prompts https://osf.io/bvcmy
    • Appendix 2.Coding schemata https://osf.io/k8e7u
    • Appendix 3.Post hoc comparisons https://osf.io/j2sqw
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.22041.avr
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