Foreign and Heritage Language Learners’ Pragmalinguistic Choices in Russian Imperatives

This experimental study examines the pragmalinguistic knowledge of both heritage and foreign language learners of Russian. Specifically, it focuses on how learners interpret the appropriateness of aspectual forms of Russian imperatives in given contexts. Due to limited exposure to authentic input, foreign language learners (FLLs) often face challenges in using pragmatically appropriate language. This study demonstrates that although heritage language learners (HLLs) are exposed to the language from birth, their knowledge of Russian imperatives may not fully align with that of monolinguals. The study participants included FLLs (n = 30), HLLs (n = 10), and monolingual speakers of Russian (n = 20). They completed an online acceptability judgment task consisting of 32 short communicative situations, each followed by two nearly identical sentences that differed only in the aspectual form of the verb (i.e., perfective or imperfective). Participants were asked to rate the appropriateness of these two sentences in the given context using a 6-point Likert scale. The analysis (a) compared how the three participant groups assessed imperfective and perfective imperatives overall, both those with and without negation; (b) examined which aspectual form—perfective or imperfective—participants rated higher across all situations; and (c) investigated the extent to which learners’ judgments converged with each other and with the monolingual baseline. The findings revealed that, while monolinguals showed overall preference of perfective forms, both HLLs and FLLs associated the perfective with affirmative imperatives and the imperfective with imperatives containing a negation ;. however, HLLs showed a more nuanced knowledge of the imperative system than did FLLs. These findings suggest that both learner groups have not fully acquired the subtle nuances at the syntax-pragmatics interface, particularly in low-frequency contexts, such as those represented by negative imperatives. The study contributes to the line of research investigating the development of HLLs’ and FLLs’ linguistic systems and has implications for pedagogy.