Russian-as-a-heritage-language vocabulary acquisition by bi-/multilingual children in Canada

Abstract

The significance of this paper is in its contribution to the innovative and ra-pidly developing research area of Russian as a heritage language (RHL) around the world. The purpose of the reported study is to explore Russian vocabulary development by bi-/multi-lingual children acquiring Russian as a heritage language in Canada. The materials come from vocabulary development and non-canonical lexical forms (NCF, earlier known as “errors”) in the speech of 29 bi-/multilingual children (between the ages of 5 and 6) from immigrant families in Saskatchewan, Canada (RHL group) as well as of 13 monolinguals from Russia (MR group). The study employs a method of a comparative analysis of vocabulary in picture-prompted narratives by children from the above two groups. The results demonstrate that bi-/multilingual RHL speaking children produced significantly more lexical NCFs as compared to their monolingual peers (MR), whereas narrative length in words, speech rate in wpm and vocabulary size did not differ across the two groups. Most NCFs in the RHL sample related to the use of verbs, followed by NCFs in the use of nouns. Unlike the speech of MR speakers, RHL participants’ language use exhibits some slight impact of dialectal forms, a few borrowings from English and code-switches to English. The study has applications for the theory of bi-/multilingualism as well as for teaching RHL to children of immigrants in North American and other contexts.