Does language transfer explain it all? The case of first language change in Russian-English bilinguals

Abstract

The present paper discusses findings from an empirical study looking into grammatical changes of Russian as the native language under the influence of English as a foreign language in a group of Russian-English bilinguals residing in the U.S. Twenty monolingual Russians and thirty Russian-English bilinguals participated in the study. All bilingual participants emigrated from Russia after their Russian language was fully acquired and had lived in the U.S. for 10-31 years prior to the time of the study. A semi-structured interview targeting autobiographical memories was employed as an elicitation technique. The analysis of narratives revealed distinctive changes in Russian in the two domains: word order and null subject use. The observed changes in the use of null pronominals suggested transfer from English. Bilinguals with more exposure to English used null pronominals less frequently. However, the directionality of effect in the use of the inverted word order by bilinguals was opposite to the predictions. Bilinguals with a very limited current exposure to Russian retained the inverted word order better than bilinguals with a broad exposure to Russian. Changes in the use of the inverted word order were partly attributed to the observed changes in the use of impersonal and existential sentences. The paper argues against cross-linguistic influence as the sole explanation of the first language changes.