Lexical features of Russian speech of bilinguals in Germany and monolinguals in Russia: an experimental study

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Introduction

One of the tasks of bilingualism research is to study the state of the Russian language in the families of compatriots living abroad, to predict its preservation and development. The most important indicator of the state of the Russian language is the preservation of its lexical composition or its change. This determines the relevance of studying the lexical characteristics of Russian speech of bilinguals.

Lexical peculiarities of speech are understood as deviations from lexical norms of the literary language (changes, modifications, transformations, non-standard lexical forms) which are the main object of experimental linguistic research. Over the past 20 years, the attention of specialists in bilingualism is more often focussed on the study of lexical features of inherited Russian (Anstatt, 2010; Pavlenko, Malt, 2011; Gagarina et al., 2014; Brehmer et al., 2016; Gagarina, Klassert, 2018; Makarova, Terekhova, 2020; Czapka et al., 2021, etc.). Heritage speakers are early bilinguals who acquired this language (L1) and the majority language (L2) either simultaneously or sequentially in early childhood (around the age of 5), but for whom at some point L2 became the primary, dominant language (Polinsky, Kagan, 2007: 368; Benmamoun et al., 2013: 133). They include children of Russian-speaking emigrants who were born in foreign countries or arrived in these countries in early childhood.

Among the studies on the vocabulary of the inherited language native speakers, there are works that examine changes in their mental vocabulary under the influence of a second language, for example, changes in ideas about the colours blue and light blue (Pavlenko et al., 2017) or about Russian cuisine items (Pavlenko, Malt, 2011), the dependence of children's verbal short-term memory and vocabulary volume on the nature of their bilingualism and family socioeconomic status (Meir, Armon-Lotem, 2017), the influence of various factors on their vocabulary development: chronological age, gender and the volume of the input (Gagarina, Klassert, 2018), translation from the second language (Jouravlev, Jared, 2020), the varieties of family communication (Czapka et al., 2021), etc.

Specificity lexicon of the inherited language speakers is revealed in comparative studies. Among them the closest to our work is the study of cognitive strategies of Russian-German bilinguals when solving lexical problems in Russian, carried out by T. Anstatt (Anstatt, 2010). This study analyzed picture narratives of 12 bilingual prechoolers 4-6 years old who arrived in Germany between the ages of 0 and 2, 12 monolinguals 4-6 years old, and 12 bilingual high school students 14-18 years old who arrived in Germany between the ages of 0 and 12. The stimulus material was pictures from the book “Frog, Where Are You?” by M. Mayer.¹ This book, also called “frog story”, contains 24 pictures, describing the adventures of a boy and his dog, who looked for a frog which had escaped from them.

T. Anstatt compared cognitive strategies in the Russian and German stories of high school students, in the Russian stories of monolingual and bilingual preschoolers, and in the Russian stories of bilingual preschoolers and high school students. The scientist found that in situations when a bilingual cannot find the necessary word, he/she uses verbal substitutions from the language of conversation (periphrases, hyperonyms, cohyponyms, etc.), substitutions from his/her second language, occasionalisms, code switching, nonverbal strategies, asks the interlocutor for help, uses evasion strategies (Anstatt, 2010: 235‒237). In the context of our study, the most interesting are the verbal substitutions and occasionalisms and the most frequent cognitive strategies of preschoolers and high school students solving lexical problems in Russian.

The speech of different generations of inherited Russian speakers is also compared in other works, but so far little research has been done on the lexical features of the Russian speech of Russian-German bilinguals in Germany in their teenage years (10‒15 years). They have not been compared with the lexical features of the speech of their parents and monolinguals of the same age living in Russia. Thus, the relevance of the present study is caused not only by social factors, but also by the need to supplement the existing knowledge about the language of bilinguals with new data.

The aim of the study is to compare the lexical features of Russian speech of two generations of bilinguals in Germany and monolinguals in Russia.

Materials and methods

The material of the research, as in the work by T. Anstatt, was transcripts of the informants' picture stories from M. Mayer's book “Frog, Where Are You?”.² The stories of bilinguals were recorded in 2021 and in 2023 in Bochum (Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia), the stories of monolinguals were recorded in 2022 in St. Petersburg. In addition, transcripts of recordings of interviews with informants and questionnaires containing the necessary sociological data were used as the research material.

In order to achieve the above-mentioned goal, lexical peculiarities of Russian speech of four groups of informants were identified and compared: 1) adult Russian-German bilinguals aged 35‒50 who moved to Germany in the 1990‒2010s; 2) their children aged 10‒15 who were born in Germany or moved to Germany at an early age; 3) adult monolinguals aged 35‒50 who live in St. Petersburg; 4) their children aged 10‒15.

The first group consists of 22 people (17 women and 5 men) who previously lived in Russia (13), Ukraine (8), and Belarus (1). They moved to Germany between the ages of 23‒36 and lived there from 7 to 18 years. Bilingual parents have higher education, speak Russian and German.

The second group consists of 26 people (13 girls and 13 boys). Twenty-one of them were born in Germany, in North Rhine-Westphalia, and five moved to Germany at the age from 1 to 7. Bilingual children speak Russian and German, study in German grammar schools, and study English.

Records in Germany were made among students attending Saturday and Sunday Russian schools and their parents, that is, the group of people who do not only communicate in Russian, but also want to preserve it.

The third group included 19 persons (14 women and 5 men). In St. Petersburg were born 13 of them, 3 in Siberia, 1 in Karelia, 1 in Nizhny Novgorod region and 1 in Kazakhstan. 18 respondents have higher education, 1 has specialized secondary education. In addition to Russian, 18 people speak English to a certain extent, 1 person does not speak any foreign languages. In addition, 5 informants study or already speak Danish, Italian, German, Turkish, French, Swedish.

The fourth group consists of 23 people (12 girls and 11 boys). In St. Petersburg were born 22 of them and its suburbs and one in the Arkhangelsk region. All the informants in this group study in Russian comprehensive schools, 22 people speak English to a certain extent, and 1 person does not speak a foreign language, 4 study other foreign languages (Spanish, French, or German).

All informants got ciphers: BP ‒ bilingual parent, BC ‒ bilingual child, MP ‒ monolingual parent, MC ‒ monolingual child and family numbers according to the sequence in recordings. If two parents from the same family or two children participated in the experiment, this was also reflected in the cipher, for example: BC-16-1, BC-16-2.

During the study, methods of comprehensive sociolinguistic analysis were used, including observation (deviations from lexical norms in the transcripts of informants were identified and written out), data systematization (the typology of deviations from norms was established), statistical data processing (the percentage of each type of deviation was established, with the total number of words in the transcript taken as 100% in each of 4 groups of informants), comparison (average percentage of each type of deviation in the groups of informants was compared), quantitative and qualitative interpretation of the data (the ratio of average percentage of each type of deviation in the groups of informants was explained, the reasons for each type of deviation were established and interpreted).

The objects of analysis in the transcripts were deviations from the lexical norms of the Russian language (what in linguodidactics and the theory of speech culture are called errors in word usage). These are various kinds of substitutions of the necessary word with another word or a paraphrase, absence of the necessary word (null substitution), insertion of an extra word. This number also included word substitutions with a non-existent word, often constructed according to a word-formation model known to the informant (in linguistics they are sometimes qualified as word-formation errors). The substitutions of function words, such as prepositions and conjunctions, were not considered, because they were treated as deviations from grammatical norms. All deviations from lexical norms were considered not only as a result of communicative strategies of speakers, but also as a result of linguistic transfer.

Results

The average number of deviations from lexical norms in the Russian speech of the two generations of bilinguals and monolinguals does not exceed 2.72%, and these deviations are characteristic of the speech of both bilinguals and monolinguals. This indicates, in particular, the preservation of the lexical system of the Russian language in Germany, at least in the two groups of Russian-German bilinguals under study. The obtained data confirm two general regularities described in the works on bilingualism: a) the number of deviations from the norms in the speech of children is greater than in the speech of adults; b) the number of deviations from the norms in the speech of bilinguals is greater than in the speech of monolinguals. They are explained by the fact that bilinguals outside the Russian language environment receive less language input than monolinguals in Russia. In addition, the speech of adult respondents, most of whom have higher education and, accordingly, know literary norms, contains fewer deviations from these norms than the speech of children.

Among the deviations from the lexical norms in the speech of both bilinguals and monolinguals, vernacular words were identified, which has not been considered in the previous studies of the lexical features in the speech of bilinguals. Vernacular words are more typical for the speech of children. In the stories of children the percentage of these words is more than 4 times higher than that in the stories of adults.

The percentage of vernacular words in the stories of bilinguals is almost 1.5 times higher than in the stories of monolinguals. The prevalence of Russian vernacular words in Germany is due to the fact that it is typical for informal communication, where bilinguals use Russian, while their official communication is in German. In Russia, official communication is in literary Russian, which contributes to its prevalence and greater fixation in the speech of adults. Vernacular words in the speech of bilinguals do not indicate a change in their Russian language, but on the contrary, its preservation in the diaspora.

Other types of substitutions largely coincide with T. Anstatt's typology. These are substitutions with cohyponyms, hyperonyms, periphrases, occasionalisms and direct borrowings. The most frequent substitutions are cohyponyms, which are made under the influence of German, and, as a rule, the informants substituted the words that are not in their active vocabulary or are unfamiliar to them.

Discussion

The analysis of the lexical features of the speech of two generations of Russian-German bilinguals and Russian monolinguals was performed in two stages. The first stage involved determining the number of deviations from lexical norms in each transcript and the number of word substitutions and omissions, as well as the insertion of extra words. The results of this stage are presented in Table 1.

Table 1
Lexical features of Russian speech of four groups of informants, average percentage, %

Лексика	The category of respondents
	Bilingual parents	Bilingual children	Monolingual parents	Monolingual children
Standard vocabulary	99.04	97.28	99.14	98.18
Deviations from lexical norms:	0.96	2.72	0.86	1.82
‒ word substitutions	0.73	2.60	0.26	1.30
‒ word omissions	0.13	0.10	0.03	0.05
‒ extra words	0.10	0.02	0.57	0.47

The data showed deviations from lexical norms in all four groups of informants, although their individual distribution is different: in some transcripts no deviations from lexical norms were noted. In the children’s stories, there are in general more deviations from lexical norms than in the speech of the parents: in the speech of bilinguals 2.8 times more and in the speech of monolinguals ‒ 2.1 times more. This is due to the fact that lexical norms in children's speech have not yet been formed and are subject to various influences.

The average number of deviations from lexical norms in the stories of adult bilinguals and monolinguals is nearly the same ‒ no more than 1%. This means that the Russian speech of adult bilinguals, who grew up and were educated in their home country, in Germany has not undergone any significant changes lexically. On the other hand, the average number of deviations from lexical norms in the stories of bilingual children is 1.5 times higher than in the stories of monolingual children, which show the changes their speech undergoes in the diaspora.

Even though the deviations from norms differ in the speech of different informants, the obtained material as a whole confirmes two general rules described in works on bilingualism (Bylund, 2009; Montrul, 2008, etc.): a) the number of deviations from norms in the speech of children is greater than in the speech of adults; b) the number of deviations from norms in the speech of bilinguals is greater than in the speech of monolinguals.

In all four groups, three structural types of deviations from lexical norms are noted: replacements, omissions and insertions of words, for example:

• word substitutions: then e / the bee house fell down (BC-14) (instead of hive); he put the frog in a glass (BC-13) (instead of in a jar); mitya found a hole in the ground / and began to shout there (MP-9) (instead of a mousehole); the boy climbed a tree / looked in the hole that was in the tree (MC-11) (instead of in the hollow);
• word omissions: then the man how / brought down the house / where the bees live / and they on him / eh / biting / and I was looking in the hollow at the time (BC-11-1) (instead of they attacked him); brought a frog in a jar / put it in front of the bed... there admired at night (BD-5) (instead of admired the frog); and his dog saw the ball / so / it turns out to be a wasp's / wasp's nest / well his master forbade him / because it is dangerous (MP-13-2) (instead of forbade to go near the nest);
• word insertions, repetitions: so huge / there is a huge tree on the road (BP-12); then they went looking for her... came out of the house and went looking for... they shouted / but she did not respond / then they went into the forest to look for her (MP-7-1).

Most deviations from lexical norms in the stories of bilinguals are word substitutions. Extra words in their stories are less frequent. In the stories of monolinguals, there are more extra words than in the stories of bilinguals: among children ‒ by 5.7 times, among adults ‒ by 23 times, which indicates their desire to control themselves less in the experiment. At the same time, there were more word omissions in the stories of bilinguals (4 times for adults, 2 times for children), which indicates their lack of familiarity with certain words, their loss or their fear of making a mistake in communication with the experimenter.

A study of the vocabulary in the stories of native Russian speakers in Germany showed that their language system is not broken at the lexical level. The speech of the Russian-German bilinguals is comprehensible and can be correlated with the speech of monolinguals.

The next stage of the study of lexical features of informants' speech was the analysis of word substitution types and their comparison with word substitution types in monolinguals' speech. The main types of substitutions are presented in Table 2. The average values not exceeding 0.01% were not taken into account, i.e. the values of 0.00% in the table may indicate not only the absence of these phenomena in the transcripts of the group of informants, but also the fact that in the speech of the informants there are these types of substitutions, but their number is not statistically significant.

Table 2
Lexical substitutions in the Russian speech of four groups of informants, average values, %

Word substitutions	Groups of informants
	Bilingual parents	Bilingual children	Monolingual parents	Monolingual children
Total	0.73	2.60	0.26	1.31
Vernacular words	0.29	1.30	0.18	0.90
Cohyponyms	0.43	1.26	0.08	0.41
Hyperonyms	0.00	0.01	0.00	0.00
Paraphrases	0.01	0.02	0.00	0.00
Occasionalism	0.00	0.01	0.00	0.00
German words	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Among the word substitutions of all categories of informants, the substitutions of literary words with vernacular words prevail. In the transcripts of bilinguals there are:

• vernacular forms of the possessive pronoun ikhni instead of literary their: after that they took with them a little frog / as seen / the son of ikhni new friend (BC-16-2);
• introductory word vidat in the meaning probably: and under this tree / there sat two frogs / vidat mom and dad (BC-9);
• the negative particle netu instead of not: vova / when he got up / was very surprised / that was netu the frog (BC-22-1); in the morning they woke up and noticed / that there was netu frog in the jar (BC-10);
• the introductory expression po hodu instead of the word may: after this they po hodu went to bed, etc.

Vernacular words were also noted in the stories of monolinguals: while anton was shouting into the hole / sharik igralsya with bees (MC-5) (instead of literary was playing).

We found that the proportion of the vernacular words in the stories of children exceeds the proportion of these words in the stories of adults (4.5 times for bilinguals, 4 times for monolinguals), which can be explained by the following factors. Firstly, according to the questionnaires, most adult informants have higher education and, accordingly, know literary language, while lexical norms in the speech of many children are still being formed. Secondly, modern public speech in Russia, which influences the lexical competence of monolingual children, is not free from vernacular elements, even the speech of journalists (Gorbanevskii et al., 2010). The presence of these elements is due to the general trends in the development of the Russian language in recent decades (Kupina, 2000; Khimik, 2000; Shaposhnikov, 2012, etc.), which influence the speech of not only monolinguals in Russia, but also bilinguals in Germany.

The proportion of vernacular words in the stories of bilinguals was higher than in the stories of monolinguals (for adults 1.3 times, for children 1.4 times). This is due to the fact that in Germany the Russian language is used family and informal communication, whereas in official communication and unofficial communication outside the diaspora the German language is used. In Russia, literary Russian is used in official communication, and, accordingly, more attention is paid to observing literary norms.

Word substitutions in the speech of the informants include the replacement of the desired word with a cohyponym, which is defined as a “neighbouring element belonging to a common hyperonym” (benachbarte Elemente, die zu einem gemeinsamen Hyperonym gehören) (Anstatt, 2010: 228). This term is also used in our article.

The analysis revealed that the active vocabulary of some bilingual children does not include the words jar, beehive, burrow, hollow, which are replaced by cohyponyms.

The word jar is replaced by the words glass (‘material’), glass (‘cookware’), bottle: he put the frog in the glass (BC-13); the dog and the boy stood up /  looking into the bottle (BC-15-1); from the glass at night / when the boy and the dog fell asleep /, the frog popped out (BC-21). These substitutions are due to the influence of the German language, where the word Glas means both glass (‘material’) and glass (‘cookware’) and glass jar.³

Instead of the word mousehole, some bilingual children use the words hole, pit, cave: I was looking into the cave at this time / there it was not there either (BC-11-1); the boy looked in the hole / called him / but no one came out there (BC-14); he is in the pit looking for a frog (BC-22-1). The word hollow is replaced by the word hole: there is a hole in the tree (BC-14); there was a hole in the oak tree / in this hole / they could not find it either (BC-16-1); this whole scene / was watched by a small frog / which came out of this particular hole in the ground (BC-16-2). These transformations are also due to the influence of the German language, where Höhle means both cave, pit, hole, and hollow.⁴

The word ground is sometimes replaced by the word floor: and from the tree our hive fell to the floor / and a swarm of bees flew out of the hive / and went after my puppy (BP-11-1); because of the dog / all the bees fell to the floor (BC-12); the hive fell to the floor / because the dog / because he shook the tree with his paw (BC-22-1). And here we can see the influence of the German Boden, which means both the ground and the floor.⁵

There are substitutions of possessive pronouns his, her, their with the pronoun svoy (‘one’s own’): in the evening the boy and svoy dog / are looking at the jar / where the frog is sitting (BC-3); one night / the boy was sitting at home and was looking at svoy frog in the jar / and svoy dog, too (BC-9). They should be qualified as lexical and grammatical substitutions, because here children do not only replace one word with another, but the whole system of Russian possessive pronouns is restructured by analogy with the German.

These examples confirm the patterns of inherited Russian, described in the works of D.R. Andrews and A. Pavlenko with co-authors: the dominant language influences the mental lexicon of the bilingual, which is reflected in his first language (Pavlenko, Malt, 2011; Pavlenko et al., 2017). At the same time they lose words of the inherited language, the so-called contact attrition, i.e. changes caused by language contact with the dominant language (Köpke, Schmid: 2004: 5‒6).

At the same time, some cohyponym substitutions cannot be explained by the influence of the German language, for example, when in the speech of a bilingual parent the word jar is replaced with the word aquarium: The boy found a frog / when walking outside with his dog / brought it home / and put it in the aquarium (BP-14). Probably, in this case there are other reasons for the substitution, for example, the desire of the parent, assuming that the child may not know the word jar, to replace it with a more comprehensible word.

Speaking about cohyponym substitutions, we should note that some examples of deviations from lexical norms may be qualified differently. For example, the use of the interrogative pronoun gde (‘where’) instead of kuda (‘where to’) in the sentence gde did he go? (BR-6) can be regarded as a travesty of the German Wo ist er hin? However, considering that this is an example from the speech of a bilingual adult, originally from Odessa, we can also assume that it manifests the specifics of the Russian speech in Odessa, noted in the work by E.N. Stepanov as a phenomenon caused by the influence of the Polish language (Stepanov, 2013: 21).

The study showed that the words mousehole and hollow in the speech of some monolinguals are also replaced by the words hole, orifice, tunnel, pit: and they found there / a log / which had a hole in it (MP-11); and here / near the old, old tree / they saw a pit in the ground (MP-5); mitya found an orifice in the ground / and began to shout there / a frog / a frog / came out / came along with us for a walk (MP-9); but when he was running / he noticed / that in the tunnel / into which Maxim was looking / lived a marmot (MC-9-1); there is a hole in this picture / he got out of the hole / and looked what was going on at all (MC-13-1).

Thus, the above-mentioned process of losing words mousehole and hollow among bilinguals can be connected not only with the influence of the German language, but also with the fact that these words leave the active vocabulary of the urban dwellers. This can also explain the replacement of the word ground in the meaning of soil, surface with the word floor.

Sometimes bilingual children use descriptive expressions, paraphrases as substitutions, for example, the word hive is replaced by word combinations bee house, house where bees live, etc. : then mani like / fell down the house / where the bees live / and they were at him / er / biting / and I was looking in the hollow at the time (BC-11-1); the dog / er / was playing at the time / er / house where the bees live / then / er / the bee house fell down (BC-14); they were looking for her in the mousehole / house from the bees / but they could not find her there either (BC-16-1); the dog was playing with the bee house / but it fell down (BC-17).

In the transcripts of bilinguals' speech there are sometimes replacements of words with hyperonyms:

• the word bees is replaced by the word animals: the first animals / which bobik noticed / flew through the air / and buzzed loudly (BP-5);
• the word jar is replaced by the word cookware: vanya and his little dog / admired their new find / which they caught in a rather even large glass cookware; it came out of the cookware and / went further away from them (BC-16-2);
• the word quack is replaced by the word sound: the boy heard the sound of frogs / and went looking for them behind the fallen tree (BC-17).

Direct lexical borrowings from German, which T. Anstatt qualifies as “material lexical transfer” (materieller lexikalischer Transfer) (Anstatt, 2010: 228), almost never occur in bilingual transcripts. For example, there is a replacement of the word semya (‘family’) by the word familia (‘surname’) (from Familie ‒ family): and next there / the familia ikhnyaa (‘their’) came / their children; this is the family ikhnyaa of the frogs; and in this familia / there was this frog / sho (vernacular ‘which’) disappeared (BC-1). This substitution occurs only with one informant ‒ a bilingual boy of 12, born in Germany to a family from Kirovograd (Ukraine).

In the transcripts of bilingual children an unexpected example was found ‒ the replacement of the word sobaka with the anglicism dog: then in the following picture / it looks like / as if the boy and the dog / at some stream / because the dog / the dog is in the water / and the boy shows the dog / that he should be quiet (BC-12). This example is noted in the speech of a 15-year-old boy, who was born in Germany to a family of natives from the Altai region and is learning English at school. It is possible that the expression looks like in this sentence also derives from the English language. It is also repeated in other sentences in this story: in the next picture you can see / the boy and the little dog went outside / and looks / as if they want to call the frog; the dog wants to play with the bees / looks like / and the boy looks into the ground / and at the end looks / as if the dog and boy / there are seven frogs / and there they have taken one frog / but there are still seven little frogs (BC-12). These deviations can only be explained by the fact that the informant's level of proficiency in English is higher than that in the inherited Russian language.

Another interesting group of deviations from the lexical norms of the Russian language are occasionalisms, non-existent words created according to word-formation models known to the speaker. Occasionalisms are mostly found in the speech of children ‒ both bilinguals and monolinguals: they looked in the hollow tree / but they the bees ispugnuli (verb “ispugat’” ‘to frighten’ + suffix of a single action -nu-) them (BP-7); they looked for her everywhere / in the ulik (noun ulei ‘beehouse’ + a diminutive suffix ik) / in the hollow tree / in the holes / but did not find her (BC-7); the dog barked / and then the house from juj (noun formed of jujat’ ‘buzz’) / fell down and everybody / and everybody ran after the dog (BC-13). S.N. Tseitlin notes that this kind of new words construction is characteristic of the speech of children (monolingual pre-schoolers) and explains it by a large number of variable speech patterns in Russian, which makes it difficult to choose the correct variant (Tseitlin, 2017: 171). There aren’t many of such phenomena in the transcripts of parents, although sometimes they occur even in adult speech: they saw their frog mari / in the company of a large lyaguh (noun formed of the word ‘lyagushka’ with the augmentative suffix -uh) (MP-7-2).

The lexical features of Russian speech of bilingual children aged 10‒15 identified in the study correlate with the results of T. Anstatt's study of lexical strategies of preschoolers and high school students (Anstatt, 2010: 236‒237). The present study also identified word substitutions with cohyponyms, hyperonyms, periphrases, German words, calques, etc. in the speech of teenagers. If we do not take into account colloquial words which are not considered in T. Anstatt's study, the most frequent lexical substitutions in the speech of teenagers, as well as in the speech of bilingual preschoolers, are the substitutions of necessary words by cohyponyms. At the same time, word substitutions with periphrases bring the speech of teenagers closer to the speech of high school students (T. Anstatt's study showed that periphrases are typical for the stories of high school students but are rarely used by preschoolers). Thus, the analysis of the lexical features of the speech of bilingual teenagers shows how at the age of 10‒15 years a gradual transition from the speech of preschoolers to the speech of high school students takes place.

Conclusion

The lexical system of the studied groups of bilinguals remains relatively stable and differs little from the lexical system of monolinguals. It is indicated in the insignificant average number of deviations from lexical norms and the large proportion of Russian vernacular words among these deviations.

The ratio of vernacular words in the transcripts of all four groups of informants follows the regularities: their number in the speech of children is greater than in the speech of adults, and in the speech of bilinguals it is greater than in the speech of monolinguals.

Among other deviations from lexical norms in the speech of bilinguals the most part are substitutions with cohyponyms, primarily under the influence of the German language. This influence is found in the substitution of words that are not in the active vocabulary of informants or generally unfamiliar to them (beehive, burrow, hollow, etc.). The number of word substitutions with hyperonyms, periphrases, occasionalisms, material borrowings is generally insignificant and most often statistically insignificant. Thus, some parts of the lexical system of the Russian language of bilingual children aged 10‒15, who were born in Germany or moved there at an early age, are subject to changes, but these changes do not violate their Russian language system integrity.

Many lexical features of the speech of bilingual children coincide with the lexical features of the speech of monolingual children, which indicates general laws of speech development. We also found common features in the speech of bilinguals aged 35‒50 who came to Germany at the age of 23‒36 years old and lived in Germany from 7 to 18 years old, and monolinguals living in Russia of the same age.

The prospects of the study are longitudinal study of lexical features of Russian speech in different groups of Russian-German bilinguals and the comparative study of lexical features of speech in bilingual families. In addition, there is a need for further experimental study of lexical peculiarities of Russian speech of monolinguals living in Russia.

 

^{1 Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? New York: Penguin Young Readers Group.}

^{2 Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? New York: Penguin Young Readers Group.}

^{3 Lein, K., Maltseva, D.G., Zuev, A.N., Minina, N.M., Dobrovolskii, D.O., Kuzavlev, V.E., Tsvilling, M.Ya., Prigoniker, I.B., Zorina, T.P., Pankin, A.V., Lerman, M.L., Liperovskaya, N.A., & Basova, N.P. (2006). Big German-Russian dictionary. Grosswörterbuch deutsch-russisch: About 95 000 words and 200 000 word combinations (p. 386) (13th ed.). Moscow: Russkij Yazyk Media.}

^{4 Lein, K., Maltseva, D.G., Zuev, A.N., Minina, N.M., Dobrovolskii, D.O., Kuzavlev, V.E., Tsvilling, M.Ya., Prigoniker, I.B., Zorina, T.P., Pankin, A.V., Lerman, M.L., Liperovskaya, N.A., & Basova, N.P. (2006). Big German-Russian dictionary. Grosswörterbuch deutsch-russisch: About 95 000 words and 200 000 word combinations (p. 455) (13th ed.). Moscow: Russkij Yazyk Media.}

^{5 Ibid., p. 179.}

About the authors

Daria G. Kovrizhkina

Saint Petersburg State University

Email: dasha2509@inbox.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0589-064X

Candidate of Pedagogy, research laboratory assistant, Faculty of Philology

7-9 Universitetskaya Naberezhnaya, Moscow, 199034, Russian Federation

Leonid V. Moskovkin

Saint Petersburg State University

Author for correspondence.
Email: moskovkin.leonid@yandex.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4818-1205

Doctor of Pedagogy, Professor, Honorary Worker of Education of the Russian Federation, Professor of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language and Its Teaching Methodology, Faculty of Philology

7-9 Universitetskaya Naberezhnaya, Moscow, 199034, Russian Federation

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