ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the research methods. It presents the main results and identifies characteristic features of heritage speakers’ narratives compared with narratives elicited from fully competent speakers. The chapter discusses the findings from a more general perspective. It also presents a preliminary investigation of the structure of narratives in heritage speakers, comparing those narratives to the ones elicited from competent speakers. An individual may use the heritage language under certain conditions and understand it, but his/her primary language is a different one. Correct identification of the baseline may assist people in understanding subjects’ histories and sociolinguistic situation with respect to their heritage language. Of course, cross-language comparisons have to take into account the average length of words in a given language; on average, Russian words are longer than English words. The restructuring of case forms also has an effect on the cases used with prepositions.
