Preposition drop in Russian spoken by Mari and Beserman bilinguals

Abstract

Aims and Research Questions:

In this paper, we present a corpus-based study of preposition drop (p-drop) in the speech of Mari Russian and Beserman Russian bilinguals compared to the speech of Russian monolinguals. Based on data from spoken corpora, we demonstrate that the prepositions v “in,” k “to,” and s “with” are omitted in the speech of bilinguals more often than in monolinguals’ speech and propose some possible explanations for the variation attested across different bilingual speakers.

Methodology:

Quantitative method Data and Analysis: An analysis of variance was carried out on the spontaneous oral speech of 20 Beserman Russian and Mari Russian bilinguals, with a total number of tokens of approximately 166,000, in comparison with the speech of nine Russian monolinguals.

Findings/Conclusions:

We found that the omission of prepositions in the speech of bilinguals and monolinguals occurs in different contexts and for different reasons. In bilinguals, p-drop can possibly be explained by phonetic interference from their first language (L1), whereas monolinguals mainly omit prepositions in lexicalized expressions. A study of the influence of sociolinguistic factors showed that the older and less educated a person is, the higher the probability of p-drop in their speech; however, this effect is clearly observable only in bilinguals.

Originality:

This is the first corpus study of preposition drop in the Russian speech of Uralic bilinguals, considering both linguistic and sociolinguistic factors using logistic regression with nested mixed effects.

Implications:

The results obtained are important for studies of preposition drop in other contact varieties and for studies of language variation in general, since this phenomenon is not necessarily contact-induced: it can also be explained by sociolinguistic factors and lexicalization.