Acquisition of Russian as a Second Language

Tania Ionin is Professor and Head of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as an Associate Editor of Language Acquisition. She is one of the editors of the 2024 Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Morphosyntax, and Semantics.Tatiana Luchkina is Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Director of the MA TESOL Program at Stony Brook University.

A groundbreaking, data-driven analysis of Russian second language acquisition. Responding to the increasingly diverse landscape of language learners, this comprehensive study examines both adult L2 learners and heritage speakers with unprecedented depth and balance. The authors investigate core linguistic domains—phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics—while exploring how age of acquisition, input quality, and cross-linguistic influence shape pathways to mastery. What sets this work apart is its methodological rigor, theoretical sophistication, and systematic comparison across learner populations. Essential reading for researchers in SLA and bilingualism.Maria Polinsky, University of MarylandThis monograph, a long-awaited exploration of issues in second language acquisition that centers on Russian and spans the linguistic domains from phonology to pragmatics, presents complex theoretical and empirical issues in an accessible form. It will become a standard reading for Russian linguists, psycholinguists, and experts on language pedagogy.Kira Gor, St. Petersburg State UniversityThe acquisition of Russian as a second language: A research overview is a valuable contribution to the field. Its focus on comparing different learners (children, heritage speakers and adults) allows the authors to impact current debates on age of acquisition, as well as quality and quantity of the input. It is a must-read for scholars and teachers of Russian.Roumyana Slabakova, University of Southampton

• Chapter 1: Introduction: second language acquisition and bilingualism in the context of RussianChapter 2: Methodological Approaches in Current Research on Second Language Acquisition of RussianChapter 3. Phonetics and phonology in Russian as a Second LanguageChapter 4: Lexical Knowledge in Russian as a Second LanguageChapter 5. The nominal domain in Russian as a second language: Case and genderChapter 6. The verbal domain in Russian as a second languageChapter 7: Word order and discourse in Russian as a second languageChapter 8. Developing Pragmatic Competence in Russian as a Second LanguageChapter 9: Summary and ConclusionIndex