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6. Results of data analysis

6.2 Discussion

Research question 1: Are there any changes in the system of Russian cases in the speech of Russian heritage speakers living in Finland and using Finnish as the main language for communications?

The study showed that the Finnish language case system has some influence on the case system of the Russian language of heritage speakers. The most obvious examples of such influence are:

Replacement of Russian cases with Finnish cases when verb agreement in Russian Finnish differs.

(32) Я нашёл эти книги только из одной библиотеки. (correct form: Я нашёл эти книги только в-PREP одной библиотеке-LOC).

I found those books only from-PREP one library-GEN.

‘I found those books only in one library’.

The Russian locative case is replaced with the Russian genitive, which corresponds to the Finnish Elative case.

Omission of prepositions or incorrect use of prepositions.

(16) Он не уверен этом деле. (correct form: Он не уверен в-PREP этом деле).

He is not sure this thing-LOC.

‘He is not sure about this thing’.

The Russian locative case in this sentence corresponds to the Finnish elative but requires the use of a dependent preposition. Without the use of preposition, the sentence is not grammatically correct.

Incorrect case agreement of nouns following numerals.

(25) Это стоило 250 тысячи. (correct form: Это стоило 250 тысяч-PL.GEN).

It cost 250 thousand-S.GEN.

‘It cost 250 thousand’.

The case used in the example above – genitive – is correct and corresponds in its semantics to the Finnish partitive case, which expresses amounts. However, singular form of genitive is used instead of plural. With all numbers greater than 1, partitive singular is required in Finnish, whereas in Russian genitive singular is used only after such numbers as 2,3,4 or numbers that end with 2,3,4 but greater than 21.

The results of an interview and its further analysis point to some cross-linguistic influence exists within the domains of morphology and across inflectional categories.

The examples of errors observed from the interviews indicate that particularly when a Finnish equivalent of a Russian verb works with a different case, the Russian case is very likely to be replaced by another Russian case, with its meaning corresponding to the Finnish case. For example, Russian accusative is replaced with genitive, which corresponds to the Finnish elative:

“наслаждаться от работы” vs “наслаждаться работой”. It tells us in favour of negative influence of L2 morphosyntax.

Research question 2: If there are such changes, what could possibly explain them?

Further research is needed to study the specifics of heritage Russian grammar. It might be beneficial to investigate other factors, which might influence the attrition of L1. Such factors, as the position of the language in the society (its prestige, number of speakers), individual’s language identity, family values are social factors that cannot be neglected when studying languages. It is particularly important to consider demography (birth rates, immigration, emigration, etc.), mixed marriages between speakers of different languages (and the choice of language at bilingual households, especially the language used when communicating with children), language attitudes (what heritage speakers think of their languages and how the society perceives the language they speak), access to education and media in the language, and institutional support by the government. It proves useful to collect more data by interviewing a larger number of participants and apply a quantitative analysis. All the factors mentioned above might be considered as variables. The study is to aim at finding correlation between the person’s social and cultural identity, and the command of the heritage language.

Research on heritage language attrition has been part of bilingual studies for several decades.

De Bot and Schrauf (2009) see attrition as result of the change in language dominance, when continuous immersion in the dominant language environment leads to the loss of native language proficiency. Silva-Corvalan and Treffers-Daller (2015) also consider that the increased amount of input in the second language was the reason for heritage language loss. They also consider other factors that could contribute to that, such as age and change in cognition.

Schmid and Köpke (2017) suggest that language loss happens because of cross-linguistic transfer phenomena, which does not support the hypothesis of language dominance. Therefore, it is not clear whether the dominant language is in any way related to heritage language attrition (Slavkov 2015, Tsimpli 2017, Schmid and Köpke 2017).

In order to better understand the nature of this phenomenon, various linguistic levels should be considered because attrition is not a one-dimensional phenomenon. Important factors to be considered are the changes in attitudes towards the language, including changes of the speakers towards the language they are speaking and the community of the same language speakers and speakers of other languages. These also include changes in the linguistic environment, such an ability to study language in formal and informal environments, the amount of language input and its quality, accessibility of literature and other resources.

Longitudinal methodology is preferable as it will help see how language attrition happens in generations. Researchers have not agreed on why language loss happens. Some researchers argue that heritage language is lost through intragenerational attrition, when future generations of heritage language speakers would totally lose it (Gonzo and Saltarelli 1983). Other investigations show that there might be no language loss even if speakers do not use it for long periods of time (de Bot and Schrauf 2009).

Heritage languages play an important role in the society. They diversify the linguistic landscape, make their contribution to the global economic community by serving as means of communication, and connect their speakers to their roots linguistically and culturally. That is why the phenomenon of heritage language attrition deserves further studying so that understanding the processes behind it would help to preserve heritage languages and save our common linguistic heritage.