What is Difficult about Grammatical Gender? Evidence from Heritage Russian

Laleko, Oksana

doi:10.1163/19552629-01102004

Cited by 26 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…With respect to articles, we expect that English Greek speakers may show agreement mismatches, see also Kaltsa et al (2017). 9 Moreover, if Corbett's distance principle and Landau's universal structure in (21a) are truly universal, then we might expect heritage grammars to also conform to them in that, see also Laleko (2018) and Fuchs (2019) on Heritage Russian and Heritage Polish, respectively: (a) if agreement mismatches occur these are to be found with clitics and pronouns, as they are distant targets; (b) to the extent that mixed agreement patterns are found DP internally, we expect low adjectives to formally agree with their target, while higher adjectives may only show semantic agreement, as they are distant from the target. These predictions are also formulated on the basis of two other studies that have discussed gender re-analysis in language contact situations, namely Dolberg (2019) on Old English-Old Norse contact, and Karatsareas (2011) on Greek-Turkish language contact, cf.…”

Section: Research Questions and Predictionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Markopoulos (2018) discusses these differences in detail. An obvious difference is that gender assignment in Greek is visible on the determiner, while in Russian gender assignment is predictable on the basis of the phonological shape of the nominative singular, see alsoPolinsky (2008),Laleko (2018), and Mitrofanova Mitrofanova Natalia et al (2018) for further discussion on Russian gender.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Gender Agreement Mismatches in Heritage Greek

et al. 2020

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This paper investigates gender agreement mismatches between nominal expressions and the targets of agreement they control in two groups (adults and adolescents) of Heritage Greek speakers in the USA. On the basis of language production data elicited via a narration task, we show that USA Greek Heritage speakers, unlike monolingual controls, show mismatches in gender agreement. We will show that the mismatches observed differ with respect to the agreement target between groups, i.e., noun phrase internal agreement seems more affected in the adolescent group, while personal pronouns appear equally affected. We will argue that these patterns suggest retreat to default gender, namely neuter in Greek. Neuter emerges as default when no agreement pattern can be established. As adult speakers show less mismatches, we will explore the reasons why speakers improve across the life span.

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Section: Research Questions and Predictionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Gender Agreement Mismatches in Heritage Greek

et al. 2020

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“…Within the available literature there is a juxtaposition of findings, sometimes even for the same HL (e.g., Spanish) depending on the study/method used. While some show that HSs struggle with gender assignment and/or subsequent agreement in production and comprehension in various HLs (i.e., Russian: Polinsky, 2008 ; Spanish: Montrul et al, 2008 ), others demonstrate that HSs do not differ qualitatively from homeland native speakers (Italian: Bianchi, 2013 ; French: Kupisch et al, 2013 ; Spanish: Alarcón, 2011 ; Montrul et al, 2013 ; and Russian: Laleko, 2018 ). This suggests that mastery of gender systems in HLs that are qualitatively the same as in homeland varieties in HLs is attainable, although they can be vulnerable under specific conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of markedness in gender processing in Italian as a heritage language: A speed accuracy tradeoff

Pisa

Kubota²,

Rothman³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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This study examined potential sources of grammatical gender variability in heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian with a focus on morphological markedness. Fifty-four adult Italian HSs living in Germany and 40 homeland Italian speakers completed an online Self-Paced Reading Task and an offline Grammaticality Judgment Task. Both tasks involved sentences with grammatical and ungrammatical noun-adjective agreement, manipulating markedness. In grammatical sentences, both groups showed a markedness effect: shorter reading times (RTs) and higher accuracy for sentences containing masculine nouns as compared to sentences with feminine nouns. In ungrammatical sentences, although both groups were sensitive to ungrammaticality, only HSs showed a markedness effect, that is, they had significantly longer RTs and higher accuracy when violations were realized on feminine adjectives. Proficiency in the HL was a significant predictor of accuracy and RTs at the individual level. Taken together, results indicate that HSs acquire and process gender in a qualitatively similar way to homeland native speakers. However, RT evidence seems to suggest that at least under particular experimental methods, markedness considerations are more prevalent for HSs resulting in a speed-accuracy tradeoff.

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“…Language skills of HSs of Russian were reported to differ from those of the monolingual speakers and those of L2 learners of Russian (Romanova, 2008;Laleko, 2019). Several studies reveal that starting from the second generation of migrants heritage Russian undergoes significant changes in lexicon (Polinsky, 2006;Isurin, 2011;Gagarina, 2011;Klassert et al, 2014), nominal morphosyntax (Polinsky, 2006(Polinsky, , 2008aGagarina, 2011;Laleko, 2018), verbal morphology (Romanova, 2008), aspectual system (Gagarina et al, 2020;Polinsky, 2006Polinsky, , 2008bAnstatt, 2008;Laleko, 2010Laleko, , 2011Laleko, , 2015 as well as pro-drop constructions (Isurin, 2011;Dubinina & Polinsky, 2013) and word order (Polinsky, 2011;Brehmer & Usanova, 2015;Laleko & Dubinina, 2018). The present study aims at contributing to the growing research on heritage Russian in the domain of syntax.…”

Section: Heritage Speakers and Heritage Russianmentioning

confidence: 99%

Word order in heritage Russian: clause type and majority language matter

Zuban

Martynova²,

Zerbian

et al. 2021

Russ Linguist

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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.

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What is Difficult about Grammatical Gender? Evidence from Heritage Russian

Cited by 26 publications

References 32 publications

Gender Agreement Mismatches in Heritage Greek

Gender Agreement Mismatches in Heritage Greek

Effects of markedness in gender processing in Italian as a heritage language: A speed accuracy tradeoff

Word order in heritage Russian: clause type and majority language matter

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