Lithuanian as L2: a case study of Russian minority children

ENIn this chapter we aim to examine the general linguistic performance of Lithuanian as L2 of a group of Russian–Lithuanian sequential preschool bilinguals. The research explores the micro-structural characteristics of narrative productions in order to investigate the linguistic domains of vocabulary and grammar and to discuss the results in the context of language exposure and dominance. The micro-structure displayed statistically significant differences between the bilingual and monolingual groups regarding two main parameters: general productivity and syntactic complexity. The main difference of the bilingual and monolingual groups was recorded for code switching and making errors, as these phenomena were observed significantly more often in the bilingual sample. The results showed that bilingual children living in a Lithuanian-language dominant city performed better at the micro-structure level than children from a more multilingual environment. Keywords: Ethnic minority; Bilingualism; Narrative; Syntactic complexity; Lexical diversity. [From the publication]