We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike.

Heritage speakers (HSs) are known to differ from monolingual speakers in various linguistic domains. The present study focuses on the syntactic properties of monolingual and heritage Russian. Using a corpus of semi-spontaneous spoken and written narratives produced by HSs of Russian residing in the US and Germany, we investigate HSs’ word order patterns and compare them to monolingual speakers of Russian from Saint Petersburg. Our results show that the majority language (ML) of HSs as well as the clause type contribute to observed differences in word order patterns between speaker groups. Specifically, HSs in Germany performed similarly to monolingual speakers of Russian while HSs in the US generally produced more SVO and less OVS orders than the speakers of the latter group. Furthermore, HSs in the US produced more SVO orders than both monolingual speakers and HSs in Germany in embedded clauses, but not in main clauses. The results of the study are discussed with the reference to the differences between main and embedded clauses as well as the differences between the MLs of the HSs.

Язык играет важную роль в истории и культуре любого народа. Национальность во многом отождествляется с идеей языка. Что же влияет на жизнь языка? Почему одни из них исчезают, а другие расширяют ареалы своего распространения? Насколько язык мож- но считать исторически заданным явлением и в какой степени – конструктом, резуль- татом “социальной инженерии”, идеологической работы? Во всем мире нарастает мно- гокультурность общества, и все более актуальной в этих условиях становится пробле- ма сохранения этнокультурной самобытности населения, передачи молодому поколению традиций его отцов и дедов. Готовя молодежь к жизни в многоязычном и поликультурном обществе, важно найти баланс между этнокультурными потребностями того или иного гражданина страны и задачами консолидации населения в интересах единого государства. В статье будут рассмотрены вопросы школьного образования на национальных языках и проблема их сохранения и изучения в регионах России. Language plays important role in the history and culture of any nation. Nationality is largely identified with the idea of language. What affects the life of the language? Why do some of them disappear, while others expand their distribution areas? How can language be regarded as historically given phenomenon and to what extent as a construct, the result of “social engineering” and ideological work? Throughout the world, the multiculturalism of society is growing, and the problem of preserving the ethno-cultural identity of the population, transferring the traditions of its fathers and grandfathers to the younger generation is becoming more urgent in these conditions. Preparing young people for life in a multilingual and multicultural society, it is important to find a balance between ethnic and cultural needs of a citizen of the country and population consolidation tasks in the interests of a united state. The report will focus on school education in national languages, and the problem of their preservation and study in Russia’s regions.

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