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Article In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism: Online-First Articles

Intonation of yes-no questions in multilingual Russian-speaking heritage children

ORCiD logo with link | University of the Balearic Islands
ORCiD logo with link | Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
ORCiD logo with link | University of the Balearic Islands
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Abstract
Migration and globalization have fostered the growth of heritage language speaking communities, yet our understanding of heritage language acquisition is far from complete, with heritage language intonation one of the most understudied areas, and evidence on prosodic development of child heritage speakers limited. This study expands the knowledge of heritage intonation acquisition by investigating the variability in child heritage speakers’ intonational phonology. We analyzed yes-no questions produced by multilingual Russian-speaking heritage children (N = 77, ages 3–13) living in Catalan-speaking territories of Spain, and by two age-matched control groups: monolingual Russian (N = 27) and bilingual Catalan–Spanish (N = 26). The languages under study exhibit distinct intonational patterns for yes-no questions, making this language combination suitable for analyzing intonational transfer. Heritage children predominantly produced monolingual-like intonation but displayed variation in patterns and used significantly fewer target nuclear pitch accents, boundary tones, and nuclear configurations than control monolinguals. Heritage Russian speakers used intonational features from the societal language, Catalan. Specifically, they used high boundary tones when speaking Russian. Our results also showed that cross-linguistic influence is linked to background language experience measures and age, as greater current use of the HL was advantageous for target-like intonation in HL at earlier stages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Russian speakers in Spain
    • 2.2Theoretical background
    • 2.3YNQ intonation in Russian, Catalan, and Spanish
    • 2.4Heritage intonation in adults and children
    • 2.5This study
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials and procedure
    • 3.3Data and statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Within-group differences
    • 4.2NPAs
    • 4.3Boundary tones
    • 4.4Nuclear contours
    • 4.5Effects of language experience
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data availability statement
  • CRediT author statement
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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