Word order and information structure in heritage and L2 Russian: Focus and unaccusativity effects in subject inversion

Abstract

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:

The study’s main objective is to investigate the effects of information structure and verb type on the acceptability of canonical and non-canonical word order patterns in baseline, heritage, and L2 Russian in a controlled experimental setting. In particular, the study examines the bilinguals’ sensitivity to extralinguistic (subject focus) and intralinguistic (unaccusativity) triggers of subject–verb inversion in Russian.

Design/methodology/approach:

The study employs a contextualized acceptability judgment task with unaccusative, unergative, and transitive predicates. In each condition, ratings for SV(O) and (O)VS structures are elicited in broad-focus and narrow-subject-focus contexts.

Data and analysis:

Data come from adult English-Russian bilinguals: heritage speakers at two proficiency levels (n = 27) and L2 learners (n = 15), compared to monolingual Russian speakers (n = 15). Welch’s unequal variances t-tests are utilized in the statistical analysis of the results.

Findings/conclusions:

Bilinguals generally under-accept inverted structures. With intransitive predicates, heritage speakers in the higher proficiency group are sensitive to the effects of unaccusativity, but not focus, on the occurrence of VS orders. However, with transitive predicates, higher proficiency heritage speakers demonstrate a target-like contrast in their ratings of OVS structures under broad and narrow focus. No clear effects of unaccusativity or focus are attested in the lower proficiency heritage or L2 speakers’ judgments of inverted orders.

Originality:

This is the first study to compare the effects of unaccusativity and focus on word order variation in baseline, heritage, and L2 Russian and to examine subject focus in both intransitive and transitive structures.

Significance/Implications:

The differential effects of subject focus obtained in the intransitive and transitive conditions indicate that heritage speakers do not experience a generalized difficulty with information-structure marking through word order. While intralinguistic word order cues seem more accessible to early bilinguals than extralinguistic cues, heritage speakers are able to attend to the latter when their visibility is enhanced in discourse.