Ludmila Isurin’s research while affiliated with The Ohio State University and other places

During the 2010 US Census enumeration the linguistic and non-linguistic behavior of Russian immigrants with little or no fluency in English was examined and contrasted with data from English language participants. The qualitative analysis of linguistic behavior (phatic communion and conversational closings) revealed similar patterns of interaction for both groups. The quantitative analysis of the non-linguistic behavior (the respondents' observed comfort level throughout the interview and the interview setting) showed a significant increase in comfort level throughout the interviews and movement into a more intimate setting contributed positively to that increase, suggesting that deviations from the strictly scripted protocol provided by the Census Bureau may positively affect the outcome and success of a government initiated activity among linguistically distant populations.

Междисциплинарный аспект этой статьи рассматривает вопрос идентичности и национальности, и в частности, вопрос этничности и национальности в восприятии русских иммигрантов в США. Более узкий ракурс статьи касается концептуальной неэквивалентности термина «национальность» в пределах теории смыслового смещения. Статья основана на данных двух исследований: первое было проведено во время последней переписи населения в США в 2010 году; второе является частью научного проекта, связанного с русской иммиграцией. Результаты двух исследований показали, как термин «национальность» интерпретируется иммигрантами на официальном уровне во время переписи населения и как русские иммигранты хотят, чтобы их воспринимали американцы в повседневной жизни. Данные двух исследований являются вкладом в изучение сложного вопроса негоциации идентичности иммигрантами.

The relationship between memory and language and the topic of bilingualism are important areas of research in both psychology and linguistics and are grounded in cognitive and linguistic paradigms, theories and experimentation. This volume provides an integrated theoretical/real-world approach to second language learning, use and processing from a cognitive perspective. A strong international and interdisciplinary team of contributors present the results of various explorations into bilingual language processing, from recent advances in studies on bilingual memory to studies on the role of the brain in language processing and language forgetting. This is a strong yet balanced combination of theoretical/overview contributions and accounts of novel, original, empirical studies which will educate readers on the relationship between theory, cognitive experimentation and data and their role in understanding language learning and practice.

The present paper looks at the growing population of Russian heritage speakers from a linguistic and psycholinguistic perspective. The study attempts to clarify further the notion of heritage language by comparing the linguistic performance of heritage speakers with that of monolinguals and second language learners. The amount of exposure to L1/L2, the age at which immigration to the U.S. occurred, degree of literacy in Russian, and metalinguistic awareness were among the sociolinguistic factors considered in the present study. The qualitative in-group and cross-group analyses revealed syntactic and morphological features that characterize Russian as a heritage language. The performance of heritage speakers on the narrative task differed from that of Russian monolinguals and American learners of Russian.

The present study reports on the evidence of first language (L1) attrition in a population that may appear to be the most resistant to L1 changes. Russian monolinguals (n= 3) and Russian–English bilinguals (n= 10) participated in the study. The bilinguals were graduate students teaching Russian as a foreign language at a U.S. university. The data were obtained through semispontaneous discourse on assigned interview topics and a grammaticality judgment task. Numerous instances of lexical and grammatical deviations registered in the data suggest that an extensive exposure to the L1 in the second language (L2) environment and motivation to keep it intact due to a high professional demand may still diminish the speaker's control over his or her L1 skills. Implications for L2 acquisition and foreign language teaching (FLT) are offered in the article.

First language vocabulary is vulnerable to forgetting after massive exposure to a second language. Two possible factors responsible for the forgetting are degree of semantic overlap between concepts in the two languages and amount of second language exposure. In a laboratory simulation of the language forgetting situation, participants received 10 exposures to a list of words in a foreign language, followed by 2, 5, 10, or 15 exposures to a list in a second foreign language. The second list consisted of either translation equivalents or new concepts. Participants were then tested for retention of the first list. More retroactive interference was found for translation equivalents than for new concepts and for higher degrees of exposure to the second list. When retention of the first list was broken down in terms of gains and losses, effects of both similarity of the second list to the first and amount of exposure to the second list were found only for losses--a fact that points to lack of discriminability as one of the underlying causes of forgetting. Overall, the experimental paradigm proved useful for exploring and developing theories about the causes of first language forgetting.

The longitudinal study reported in the present paper examines L1 vocabulary decline by a child whose native language input effectively ceased after her immersion into the L2 environment. The subject of the study was a Russian girl adopted by an American family, brought to the USA, and completely isolated from any contact with the Russian-speaking environment. The analysis of the data was based on the results of picture naming tasks and reaction time measurements. Three groups of words showed high vulnerability to forgetting: high frequency words, cognates, and semantically convergent pairs (pairs of words lexically distinguished in L2 and non-distinguished in L1). Fast forgetting of these lexical items in L1 was related to the acquisition of their equivalents in L2. The comparison of noun versus verb retention/acquisition suggested that there might be a delay in L1 verb forgetting / L2 verb acquisition at the early stage of an extensive exposure to the second language.