Russian in Germany across Generations

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernhard Brehmer
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 445288386

The project investigates language transmission and change among three different generations of speakers of Russian in Germany. The expected results of the project will contribute to our theoretical understanding about first language attrition in immigration settings and the role of quality of input for heritage language acquisition.The project pursues a comparative approach which involves two dimensions of comparison: First, we are going to compare the proficiency in Russian of representatives of three different generations of speakers of Russian in Germany: We will collect data from (i) the grandparents who immigrated as elder adults to Germany (= potential L1 attriters); (ii) parents who immigrated as adolescents to Germany and experienced a rapid change in their linguistic environment at an early point (generation 1.5 of immigrants); (iii) children who were already born in Germany (= typical heritage speakers). All three groups represent different profiles with regard to their bilingual language acquisition. The relevance of the first two groups for research on L1 attrition is obvious, but they differ with regard to their age when their linguistic environment changed dramatically due to immigration. Moreover, they both supply the input for the acquisition of Russian by the third group which opens possibilities for investigating the role of quality of input for heritage language acquisition. Second, our research will not be confined to effects of L1 attrition and quality of input with regard to isolated linguistic properties, but we will adopt a holistic approach by including properties from several linguistic levels (phonetics and phonology, prosody, inflectional morphology, morphosyntax, syntax and lexicon). This design will allow us to check (a) for the (differing) degree of vulnerability of the investigated properties considering attrition processes and language change and (b) the importance of quality of parental input on language acquisition by the subsequent generation of speakers of Russian as a minority language depending on the investigated linguistic property.The project will provide answers to the following research questions: (i) Which non-canonical features are acquired through deviant input of preceding generations and which emerge within one generation?; (ii) Are the same mechanisms (attrition or incomplete acquisition of features which are still present in preceding generations, contact-induced change, language-internal changes) at play in all three generations?; (iii) Do these mechanisms affect the same linguistic levels and, if yes, are they affected to the same degree in the three generations (also regarding the "transferability" of the resulting noncanonical features to the following generation)? Another anticipated result of the project consists in building an annotated corpus of Russian in Germany as a unique source for studying the development of Russian under contact conditions over a time span of three generations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Russia
• Partner Organisation: Russian Science Foundation, until 3/2022
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Leonid Moskovkin, until 3/2022