Anna Mikhaylova | The University of Queensland, Australia (original) (raw)
Papers by Anna Mikhaylova
Language Learning, 2018
We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore th... more We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore the feasibility of such an approach in second language (L2) research. To this end, we addressed open questions in a line of research that has examined whether having learners attend to form while reading or listening to a L2 passage interferes with comprehension. Our results are consistent with findings from the specific paradigm that we replicated in that no effects on comprehension were detected in analyses conducted over all sites. However, further investigation is warranted due to site‐specific effects and methodological limitations. We found all aspects of the multisite registered replication approach to be useful although the registration component itself appeared to be an especially feasible and valuable first step toward increasing the robustness and generalizability of findings in our field.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded Open Data, Open Materials, and Preregistered Re...
JOMEC Journal, 2017
This article explores the topics of Russian diaspora and the politics of culture and identity, ex... more This article explores the topics of Russian diaspora and the politics of culture and identity, expressed through Russia's humanitarian cooperation initiatives. The study posits that the Russian cultural diplomacy policy focuses on compatriots living abroad and the Russian Diaspora to create and solidify Russkiy Mir [Russian World] communities and turn them into Russia's advocates abroad. The study extends the argument that the Russian language is treated as one of the main tools in Russia's soft power arsenal to foster loyal and supportive attitudes toward Russia among the Russian-speaking communities. Such policy accentuates language as an important marker of stronger sense of belonging and self-identification (in this case with the Russian World) and a critical element in the construction of cultural and/or ethnic identity. The study highlights the complexity and diversity of Russian Diasporas and Russian compatriots that comprise Russkiy Mir, specifically in the United States, and discusses the socio-linguistic factors these efforts must take into account in the Russian-speaking Diasporas abroad.
Both late and early bilingualism can result in incomplete acquisition of the non-dominant languag... more Both late and early bilingualism can result in incomplete acquisition of the non-dominant language of the acquirer (see Montrul, 2008, for a thorough discussion). That is, due to lack of abundant and variable linguistic input and opportunities for language use, both the acquisition of a second language (L2) after puberty and the acquisition of the first and non-dominant language in the context of bilingualism, i.e., heritage language (HL) acquisition, may lead to a non-convergent grammar that is different from the monolingual baseline. Despite onset of acquisition in a naturalistic environment before puberty, heritage language acquirers have been reported to have deficits so often observed among L2 learners: problems with discourse pragmatics (Kagan, 2006; Polinsky, 2007), lexicon (Polinsky, 2007; Montrul, 2009); and morpho-syntax, e.g., gender agreement (Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán, 2008; Polinsky, 2006); differential object marking (Montrul & Bowles, 2008); and tense/aspect/mood (M...
This study bridges a gap in heritage language (HL) research to date by focusing on learners that ... more This study bridges a gap in heritage language (HL) research to date by focusing on learners that do not neatly fit the often-cited definitions and profiles of HL learners (e.g., Polinsky & Kagan, 2007; Carreira & Kagan, 2011). We study the effects of L1 attrition of Russian in teenage HL learners several years after exposure to the HL in the immediate family or community has ceased, due either to international adoption or to other restricted access to Russian speakers. We compare them in the context of re-exposure through a short-term cultural and language immersion program to age-matched foreign language (L2) learners. Each participant in the program produced oral narratives in two sessions, three and a half weeks apart, and the resulting narratives were coded and analyzed for fluency and accuracy. Although the results show significant attrition in the language of the HL learners, they surpassed the L2 learners in several fluency and accuracy measures. We discuss the strategies tha...
This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency h... more This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency heritage language (HL) learners of Russian converge with monolingual (L1) speakers or proficiency-matched foreign language (L2) learners in their interpretation of aspectual pairs and whether the absence of convergence arises in the lexical component of aspect (telicity) or in the grammatical component of aspect (boundedness). In Russian, both aspectual features are overtly marked on the verb, but by different morphemes: telicity is encoded in prefixes and boundedness in suffixes. The goal of the task is to test: 1) whether HL learners have an advantage over L2 learners on the same overall proficiency level when they interpret aspectual pairs, 2) which type of aspectual contrast poses greater difficulty, and 3) what role the morphological structure of predicates plays in incomplete acquirers’ interpretation of verbal aspect. The results reveal that, while the L2 group and the monolingual ...
This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency h... more This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency heritage language (HL) learners of Russian converge with monolingual (L1) speakers or proficiency-matched foreign language (L2) learners in their interpretation of aspectual pairs and whether the absence of convergence arises in the lexical component of aspect (telicity) or in the grammatical component of aspect (boundedness). In Russian, both aspectual features are overtly marked on the verb, but by different morphemes: telicity is encoded in prefixes and boundedness in suffixes. The goal of the task is to test: 1) whether HL learners have an advantage over L2 learners on the same overall proficiency level when they interpret aspectual pairs, 2) which type of aspectual contrast poses greater difficulty, and 3) what role the morphological structure of predicates plays in incomplete acquirers’ interpretation of verbal aspect. The results reveal that, while the L2 group and the monolingual controls diverge significantly in most contrasts, the HL group converges with both L1 and L2 groups. For both test groups, telicity contrasts in activity/accomplishment verbs, which are expressed via prefixation, and boundedness contrasts in achievement verbs, which are expressed via suffixation, presented less difficulty than boundedness contrasts in accomplishment verbs, expressed via both prefixation and suffixation.
Heritage Language Journal
This paper offers a state of the art review of the available linguistic scholarship on the acquis... more This paper offers a state of the art review of the available linguistic scholarship on the acquisition of Russian aspect in various acquisition scenarios. While the studies reviewed here differ in their analyses of Russian verbal aspect, specific research questions, acquisition context, and research methodology, a common observation is that Russian aspectual contrasts are not easily acquired and that some may be more difficult to master than others. The review shows that some of these asymmetries are not unique to child grammars or to bilingual acquisition, but hold in all the acquisition contexts and may be determined by the complexity of the category itself, while others reflect developmental trends and effects of context and timing of acquisition. The paper starts with an overview of Russian aspect and the associated learning tasks, which is followed by the review of patterns emerging from studies on the acquisition of aspect by children, adult foreign language learners, and adul...
Heritage Language Journal
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 2009
This lexical decision task tests the salience of the first language phonological filter in fluent... more This lexical decision task tests the salience of the first language phonological filter in fluent Russian-English adult bilinguals. The results show that illegal English nonwords with sound clusters impossible for English but which are at the same time legal for Russian (which means they occur in Russian), are sooner recognized as such than those nonwords that do not violate constraints of either language. All critical items have the same structure (CCVCC), with one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondence and are controlled for frequency and neighborhood density. As expected, both groups have significantly lower accuracy and take longer to process legal nonwords, and native English speakers have faster processing times and better accuracy than the bilingual group. The results of the experiment and the debriefing session suggest that, at the level of phonological processing, fluent adult bilinguals seem well aware of the information that is impossible in L2 and reject illegal items before accessing lexical knowledge.
While the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold around the world, one of... more While the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold around the world, one of its most immediate effects – beyond significant loss of life and livelihood – has been the exposure of existing weaknesses in various sectors and systems. This is especially evident in higher education, with its growing overreliance on the (hyper)mobile student body. In this paper we explore critically the challenges and possibilities behind the options of ‘reframing’ and ‘hospicing’ current understandings of student mobility, particularly with respect to the simultaneously romanticized and commodified development of intercultural (communicative) competence. We treat reframing and hospicing as concurrent, co-existing approaches and spaces in which we may dwell as we rethink what it means to engage meaningfully and equitably with difference at both global and local levels. We also explore how ‘hospicing’ may help us to disinvest ourselves from the promises of mobility, letting go of our ...
Journal of Language Contact
The Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008) assumes functional morphology to be a particular chal... more The Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008) assumes functional morphology to be a particular challenge in second language (L2) acquisition whereas acquisition of syntax and semantics to be unproblematic. I propose, following Polinsky (2011), that functional morphology can be seen as an acquisitional bottleneck for heritage language (hl) speakers as well. Russian verbal aspect is known to be problematic in bilingual Russian children (Anstatt, 2008; Gupol, 2009), in adult foreign language learners (Slabakova, 2005, Nossalik, 2009) and in Russian heritage speakers of low (Polinsky, 2008) and even near-native fluency (Laleko, 2010). This comprehension study tested fluent and literate English dominant hl speakers of Russian on their interpretation of lexical and grammatical aspect. The findings suggest that the semantics and syntax of aspect were unproblematic, but aspectual morphology played both a facilitative and a hindering role in the comprehension of aspectual distinctions. In the ...
We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore th... more We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore the feasibility of such an approach in second language (L2) research. To this end, we addressed open questions in a line of research that has examined whether having learners attend to form while reading or listening to a L2 passage interferes with comprehension. Our results are consistent with findings from the specific paradigm that we replicated in that no effects on comprehension were detected in analyses conducted over all sites. However, further investigation is warranted due to site‐specific effects and methodological limitations. We found all aspects of the multisite registered replication approach to be useful although the registration component itself appeared to be an especially feasible and valuable first step toward increasing the robustness and generalizability of findings in our field.
This article explores the topics of Russian diaspora and the politics of culture and identity, ex... more This article explores the topics of Russian diaspora and the politics of culture and identity, expressed through Russia's humanitarian cooperation initiatives. The study posits that the Russian cultural diplomacy policy focuses on compatriots living abroad and the Russian Diaspora to create and solidify Russkiy Mir [Russian World] communities and turn them into Russia's advocates abroad. The study extends the argument that the Russian language is treated as one of the main tools in Russia's soft power arsenal to foster loyal and supportive attitudes toward Russia among the Russian-speaking communities. Such policy accentuates language as an important marker of stronger sense of belonging and self-identification (in this case with the Russian World) and a critical element in the construction of cultural and/or ethnic identity. The study highlights the complexity and diversity of Russian Diasporas and Russian compatriots that comprise Russkiy Mir, specifically in the United States, and discusses the socio-linguistic factors these efforts must take into account in the Russian-speaking Diasporas abroad.
This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency h... more This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency heritage language (HL) learners of Russian converge with monolingual (L1) speakers or proficiency-matched foreign language (L2) learners in their interpretation of aspectual pairs and whether the absence of convergence arises in the lexical component of aspect (telicity) or in the grammatical component of aspect (boundedness). In Russian, both aspectual features are overtly marked on the verb, but by different morphemes: telicity is encoded in prefixes and boundedness in suffixes. The goal of the task is to test: 1) whether HL learners have an advantage over L2 learners on the same overall proficiency level when they interpret aspectual pairs, 2) which type of aspectual contrast poses greater difficulty, and 3) what role the morphological structure of predicates plays in incomplete acquirers' interpretation of verbal aspect. The results reveal that, while the L2 group and the monolingual controls diverge significantly in most contrasts, the HL group converges with both L1 and L2 groups. For both test groups, telicity contrasts in activity/accomplishment verbs, which are expressed via prefixation, and boundedness contrasts in achievement verbs, which are expressed via suffixation, presented less difficulty than boundedness contrasts in accomplishment verbs, expressed via both prefixation and suffixation.
Language Learning, 2018
We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore th... more We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore the feasibility of such an approach in second language (L2) research. To this end, we addressed open questions in a line of research that has examined whether having learners attend to form while reading or listening to a L2 passage interferes with comprehension. Our results are consistent with findings from the specific paradigm that we replicated in that no effects on comprehension were detected in analyses conducted over all sites. However, further investigation is warranted due to site‐specific effects and methodological limitations. We found all aspects of the multisite registered replication approach to be useful although the registration component itself appeared to be an especially feasible and valuable first step toward increasing the robustness and generalizability of findings in our field.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded Open Data, Open Materials, and Preregistered Re...
JOMEC Journal, 2017
This article explores the topics of Russian diaspora and the politics of culture and identity, ex... more This article explores the topics of Russian diaspora and the politics of culture and identity, expressed through Russia's humanitarian cooperation initiatives. The study posits that the Russian cultural diplomacy policy focuses on compatriots living abroad and the Russian Diaspora to create and solidify Russkiy Mir [Russian World] communities and turn them into Russia's advocates abroad. The study extends the argument that the Russian language is treated as one of the main tools in Russia's soft power arsenal to foster loyal and supportive attitudes toward Russia among the Russian-speaking communities. Such policy accentuates language as an important marker of stronger sense of belonging and self-identification (in this case with the Russian World) and a critical element in the construction of cultural and/or ethnic identity. The study highlights the complexity and diversity of Russian Diasporas and Russian compatriots that comprise Russkiy Mir, specifically in the United States, and discusses the socio-linguistic factors these efforts must take into account in the Russian-speaking Diasporas abroad.
Both late and early bilingualism can result in incomplete acquisition of the non-dominant languag... more Both late and early bilingualism can result in incomplete acquisition of the non-dominant language of the acquirer (see Montrul, 2008, for a thorough discussion). That is, due to lack of abundant and variable linguistic input and opportunities for language use, both the acquisition of a second language (L2) after puberty and the acquisition of the first and non-dominant language in the context of bilingualism, i.e., heritage language (HL) acquisition, may lead to a non-convergent grammar that is different from the monolingual baseline. Despite onset of acquisition in a naturalistic environment before puberty, heritage language acquirers have been reported to have deficits so often observed among L2 learners: problems with discourse pragmatics (Kagan, 2006; Polinsky, 2007), lexicon (Polinsky, 2007; Montrul, 2009); and morpho-syntax, e.g., gender agreement (Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán, 2008; Polinsky, 2006); differential object marking (Montrul & Bowles, 2008); and tense/aspect/mood (M...
This study bridges a gap in heritage language (HL) research to date by focusing on learners that ... more This study bridges a gap in heritage language (HL) research to date by focusing on learners that do not neatly fit the often-cited definitions and profiles of HL learners (e.g., Polinsky & Kagan, 2007; Carreira & Kagan, 2011). We study the effects of L1 attrition of Russian in teenage HL learners several years after exposure to the HL in the immediate family or community has ceased, due either to international adoption or to other restricted access to Russian speakers. We compare them in the context of re-exposure through a short-term cultural and language immersion program to age-matched foreign language (L2) learners. Each participant in the program produced oral narratives in two sessions, three and a half weeks apart, and the resulting narratives were coded and analyzed for fluency and accuracy. Although the results show significant attrition in the language of the HL learners, they surpassed the L2 learners in several fluency and accuracy measures. We discuss the strategies tha...
This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency h... more This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency heritage language (HL) learners of Russian converge with monolingual (L1) speakers or proficiency-matched foreign language (L2) learners in their interpretation of aspectual pairs and whether the absence of convergence arises in the lexical component of aspect (telicity) or in the grammatical component of aspect (boundedness). In Russian, both aspectual features are overtly marked on the verb, but by different morphemes: telicity is encoded in prefixes and boundedness in suffixes. The goal of the task is to test: 1) whether HL learners have an advantage over L2 learners on the same overall proficiency level when they interpret aspectual pairs, 2) which type of aspectual contrast poses greater difficulty, and 3) what role the morphological structure of predicates plays in incomplete acquirers’ interpretation of verbal aspect. The results reveal that, while the L2 group and the monolingual ...
This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency h... more This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency heritage language (HL) learners of Russian converge with monolingual (L1) speakers or proficiency-matched foreign language (L2) learners in their interpretation of aspectual pairs and whether the absence of convergence arises in the lexical component of aspect (telicity) or in the grammatical component of aspect (boundedness). In Russian, both aspectual features are overtly marked on the verb, but by different morphemes: telicity is encoded in prefixes and boundedness in suffixes. The goal of the task is to test: 1) whether HL learners have an advantage over L2 learners on the same overall proficiency level when they interpret aspectual pairs, 2) which type of aspectual contrast poses greater difficulty, and 3) what role the morphological structure of predicates plays in incomplete acquirers’ interpretation of verbal aspect. The results reveal that, while the L2 group and the monolingual controls diverge significantly in most contrasts, the HL group converges with both L1 and L2 groups. For both test groups, telicity contrasts in activity/accomplishment verbs, which are expressed via prefixation, and boundedness contrasts in achievement verbs, which are expressed via suffixation, presented less difficulty than boundedness contrasts in accomplishment verbs, expressed via both prefixation and suffixation.
Heritage Language Journal
This paper offers a state of the art review of the available linguistic scholarship on the acquis... more This paper offers a state of the art review of the available linguistic scholarship on the acquisition of Russian aspect in various acquisition scenarios. While the studies reviewed here differ in their analyses of Russian verbal aspect, specific research questions, acquisition context, and research methodology, a common observation is that Russian aspectual contrasts are not easily acquired and that some may be more difficult to master than others. The review shows that some of these asymmetries are not unique to child grammars or to bilingual acquisition, but hold in all the acquisition contexts and may be determined by the complexity of the category itself, while others reflect developmental trends and effects of context and timing of acquisition. The paper starts with an overview of Russian aspect and the associated learning tasks, which is followed by the review of patterns emerging from studies on the acquisition of aspect by children, adult foreign language learners, and adul...
Heritage Language Journal
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 2009
This lexical decision task tests the salience of the first language phonological filter in fluent... more This lexical decision task tests the salience of the first language phonological filter in fluent Russian-English adult bilinguals. The results show that illegal English nonwords with sound clusters impossible for English but which are at the same time legal for Russian (which means they occur in Russian), are sooner recognized as such than those nonwords that do not violate constraints of either language. All critical items have the same structure (CCVCC), with one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondence and are controlled for frequency and neighborhood density. As expected, both groups have significantly lower accuracy and take longer to process legal nonwords, and native English speakers have faster processing times and better accuracy than the bilingual group. The results of the experiment and the debriefing session suggest that, at the level of phonological processing, fluent adult bilinguals seem well aware of the information that is impossible in L2 and reject illegal items before accessing lexical knowledge.
While the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold around the world, one of... more While the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold around the world, one of its most immediate effects – beyond significant loss of life and livelihood – has been the exposure of existing weaknesses in various sectors and systems. This is especially evident in higher education, with its growing overreliance on the (hyper)mobile student body. In this paper we explore critically the challenges and possibilities behind the options of ‘reframing’ and ‘hospicing’ current understandings of student mobility, particularly with respect to the simultaneously romanticized and commodified development of intercultural (communicative) competence. We treat reframing and hospicing as concurrent, co-existing approaches and spaces in which we may dwell as we rethink what it means to engage meaningfully and equitably with difference at both global and local levels. We also explore how ‘hospicing’ may help us to disinvest ourselves from the promises of mobility, letting go of our ...
Journal of Language Contact
The Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008) assumes functional morphology to be a particular chal... more The Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008) assumes functional morphology to be a particular challenge in second language (L2) acquisition whereas acquisition of syntax and semantics to be unproblematic. I propose, following Polinsky (2011), that functional morphology can be seen as an acquisitional bottleneck for heritage language (hl) speakers as well. Russian verbal aspect is known to be problematic in bilingual Russian children (Anstatt, 2008; Gupol, 2009), in adult foreign language learners (Slabakova, 2005, Nossalik, 2009) and in Russian heritage speakers of low (Polinsky, 2008) and even near-native fluency (Laleko, 2010). This comprehension study tested fluent and literate English dominant hl speakers of Russian on their interpretation of lexical and grammatical aspect. The findings suggest that the semantics and syntax of aspect were unproblematic, but aspectual morphology played both a facilitative and a hindering role in the comprehension of aspectual distinctions. In the ...
We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore th... more We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore the feasibility of such an approach in second language (L2) research. To this end, we addressed open questions in a line of research that has examined whether having learners attend to form while reading or listening to a L2 passage interferes with comprehension. Our results are consistent with findings from the specific paradigm that we replicated in that no effects on comprehension were detected in analyses conducted over all sites. However, further investigation is warranted due to site‐specific effects and methodological limitations. We found all aspects of the multisite registered replication approach to be useful although the registration component itself appeared to be an especially feasible and valuable first step toward increasing the robustness and generalizability of findings in our field.
This article explores the topics of Russian diaspora and the politics of culture and identity, ex... more This article explores the topics of Russian diaspora and the politics of culture and identity, expressed through Russia's humanitarian cooperation initiatives. The study posits that the Russian cultural diplomacy policy focuses on compatriots living abroad and the Russian Diaspora to create and solidify Russkiy Mir [Russian World] communities and turn them into Russia's advocates abroad. The study extends the argument that the Russian language is treated as one of the main tools in Russia's soft power arsenal to foster loyal and supportive attitudes toward Russia among the Russian-speaking communities. Such policy accentuates language as an important marker of stronger sense of belonging and self-identification (in this case with the Russian World) and a critical element in the construction of cultural and/or ethnic identity. The study highlights the complexity and diversity of Russian Diasporas and Russian compatriots that comprise Russkiy Mir, specifically in the United States, and discusses the socio-linguistic factors these efforts must take into account in the Russian-speaking Diasporas abroad.
This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency h... more This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency heritage language (HL) learners of Russian converge with monolingual (L1) speakers or proficiency-matched foreign language (L2) learners in their interpretation of aspectual pairs and whether the absence of convergence arises in the lexical component of aspect (telicity) or in the grammatical component of aspect (boundedness). In Russian, both aspectual features are overtly marked on the verb, but by different morphemes: telicity is encoded in prefixes and boundedness in suffixes. The goal of the task is to test: 1) whether HL learners have an advantage over L2 learners on the same overall proficiency level when they interpret aspectual pairs, 2) which type of aspectual contrast poses greater difficulty, and 3) what role the morphological structure of predicates plays in incomplete acquirers' interpretation of verbal aspect. The results reveal that, while the L2 group and the monolingual controls diverge significantly in most contrasts, the HL group converges with both L1 and L2 groups. For both test groups, telicity contrasts in activity/accomplishment verbs, which are expressed via prefixation, and boundedness contrasts in achievement verbs, which are expressed via suffixation, presented less difficulty than boundedness contrasts in accomplishment verbs, expressed via both prefixation and suffixation.