Negative existential constructions in bilingual Russian

Abstract This paper reports on a study investigating variation in negative existential constructions in varieties of Russian spoken by bilinguals from different regions of Russia. Non-standard marking of the negated subject in such constructions is reported in the literature as a common feature of varieties of bilingual Russian and is usually explained as the result of pattern borrowing due to contact with languages that, unlike Russian, do not have any special marking of the subject in such constructions. In this study, we analyze data from seven spoken corpora of bilingual Russian and compare them to data from a spoken corpus of monolingual Russian. The results of the analysis show that pattern borrowing can account for part of the variation patterns attested in our data, but not for all of them. By applying a quantitative variationist method to data analysis, we show that variation is motivated by an interaction of multiple linguistic and extralinguistic factors, not all of which are related to language contact.