Grammatical aspect in heritage and monolingual Greek, Russian and Turkish

Abstract

In Greek, Russian, and Turkish, grammatical aspect is realized in different ways. The grammars of heritage varieties of the three languages show interesting dynamics regarding aspectual constructions and preferences. This study discusses cross-linguistically the aspect realization in heritage and monolingual populations' production data, investigating the extra-linguistic factors of formality and mode in several communicative situations. In line with previous literature, it was found that under language contact, markedness alongside formality, mode, and narration task impact speakers' choice of aspectual forms. However, these effects are not universal cross-linguistically and especially for the languages under the scope of the present study. Our contribution provides results from an advanced statistical analysis on large-scale cross-linguistic data and contributes to the discussion about novel perspectives in this unexplored field of heritage languages.