Grammar of errors and Construction Grammar: The case of «heritage Russian».


2014. №3, 3-19

Anastasija S. Vyrenkova a, Maria S. Polinskaja b, Ekaterina V. Raxilina (E. V. Rakhilina) a, c, @
a National Research University «Higher School of Economics», Moscow, 101000, Russia;
b Harvard university, Cambridge, MA, United States;
c Vinogradov Institute of the Russian Language, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 119019, Russia;
@ rakhilina@gmail.com

Abstract:

The article gives an overview of mistakes made by a peculiar type of speakers – children of emigrants from Russia who grew up in a foreign linguistic environment and inherited their Russian from their parents. English tradition refers to this variety of Russian as «heritage Russian». The study is based on the data from the Russian learner corpus, which includes texts produced by children of emigrants to the USA. The results show that the mistakes made by this type of speakers are different from those made by both common speakers of Russian and L2 students, and the process of their emergence is of signifi cant linguistic interest.