Word order in heritage Russian under different dominant languages

Abstract

This paper reports on an experimental study that examines the relationship between word order and information structure in the Russian of adult English-dominant and Hebrew-dominant heritage speakers of Russian. The objectives of the study were: (a) To examine whether the relationship between word order and information structure is acquirable by heritage speakers; and (b) To examine whether there is transfer from the dominant language in this domain. The results of an acceptability judgment task show that heritage speakers performed quite similarly to monolinguals; there was improvement with proficiency, but no evidence of transfer from the dominant language. The mapping between word order and information structure is found to be quite robust in heritage language acquisition.