Case and Copular Sentences in Heritage Speakers of Russian

Abstract

This study investigates the grammatical abilities of heritage speakers of Russian with regard to their use of grammatical case in copular sentences. In the present tense, the only grammatical construction has the predicate in the Nominative case. However, in the past and future tenses, some baseline speakers will accept it in either the Instrumental or Nominative case, alternating based on semantic context. This study seeks to answer two questions. First, can Heritage speakers of Russian correctly use case forms in the present tense, where only one is grammatical? Second, in past and future tenses, do they select one over the other based on semantic context in the same way as baseline speakers? The results show that there is indeed a statistically significant difference between heritage and baseline speakers of Russian, indicating that the interaction of syntax and semantics may be an area of particular difficulty for heritage speakers.