The factors affecting the mastery of the host country's language by the children of immigrants are important in the study of immigration-related issues. This exploratory study analyses the possible link between parental socio-linguistic background factors (parent-child language choice, parental proficiency in L2, educational level, socio-economic…

The unique needs, goals, and constraints of heritage language learners in U.S. higher education and the multiple ways that they differ from those of second and foreign language (L2) learners have been well documented (Brisk, 2000; Chevalier, 2004; Grosjean, 1982; Kagan & Dillon, 2003). Each population uses its two languages in diverse ways, for…

Originating from many different sources, Russian as a heritage language in Finland displays a spectrum of developmental tendencies: both attrition and maintenance can be observed in various degrees. The Finnish educational system allows for the organization of bilingual pre-schools and schools when there are sufficient numbers of potential pupils.…

Patterns of language are usually perceived, learned and used as meaningful chunks that are processed as a whole, resulting in a reduced learning burden and increased fluency. The ability to comprehend and produce lexical chunks or groups of words which are commonly found together is an important part of language acquisition. This paper…

In the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, cadre problems in Russian science gradually came to be included among the problems that are the most pressing and whose solutions need to be given top priority. The mass exodus of young and middle-aged qualified specialists from scientific research institutes, design bureaus, and scientific…

This study introduces a typological model of the "conceptual language-specific approach" to the L2 research on the acquisition of tense-aspect. The model is based on the typological notion of prominence, classifying languages into tense-prominent and aspect-prominent (Bhat 1999) and the L1 research proposal that language-specific…

The purpose of this study was to compare the parent/child interactions between Russian immigrant and non-immigrant families in a rural Missouri school setting. A questionnaire was administered to 30 American families and 30 Russian immigrant families. Data concerning developmental level upon kindergarten entry were gathered from kindergarten…

Peter I's editorial policy appears as a starting point in the birth of secular Russian textbooks. Since the printing production was then organized on a massive scale as a response to the needs of European-like modernization, it should be safely suggested that nearly "all" books produced during this pioneering period focused teaching…

This paper defines and provides examples of a category of linguistic minorities that we call extrinsic minorities. Three case studies are summarised to illustrate the spectrum of linguistic heterogeneity of extrinsic minorities, and the linguistic consequences. These cases show a continuum of how they fit into our definition of extrinsic…

The family unit and home domain have been and remain important in heritage language maintenance efforts. There are complex relationships between parental language attitudes, their application in everyday language management activities and the children's knowledge of home language vocabulary. The present large-scale study examined the family policy…

Our previous research showed that Russian children commit fewer gender-agreement errors with diminutive nouns than with their simplex counterparts. Experiment 1 replicates this finding with Russian children (N=24, mean 3;7, range 2;10-4;6). Gender agreement was recorded from adjective usage as children described animal pictures given just their…

This paper focuses on the temporal and modal meanings associated with root infinitives (RIs) and other non-finite clauses in several typologically diverse languages--English, Russian, Greek and Dutch. I discuss the role that event structure, aspect, and modality play in the interpretation of these clauses. The basic hypothesis is that in the…

This study examined whether singular/plural marking in a language helps children learn the meanings of the words "one," "two," and "three." First, CHILDES data in English, Russian (which marks singular/plural), and Japanese (which does not) were compared for frequency, variability, and contexts of number-word use.…

The outbreak of the First World War and the emergence of Russia as Britain's "glorious ally" swiftly changed public attitudes in Britain, which had been largely, but not entirely, hostile to Russia. The sense that Britain needed to cure its 'abysmal ignorance' of Russia, coupled with the strong desire to replace Germany, the enemy, as a…

This paper documents the occurrence of form variability through diminutive "wordplay", and examines whether this variability facilitates or hinders morphology acquisition in a richly inflected language. First, in a longitudinal speech corpus of eight Russian mothers conversing with their children (1.6-3.6), and with an adult, the use of diminutive…