We examine patterns of acquiring non-native languages in a model with two languages and two populations with heterogeneous learning skills, where every individual faces a binary choice of learning the foreign language or refraining from doing so. We show that both interior and corner linguistic...

The problem of incomplete language acquisition and heritage languages is approached from several perspectives: who are heritage speakers, how are they different from native speakers and L2 learners, is heritage language a particular system? This paper aims at answering these and other questions...

We introduce the notion of language disenfranchisement which arises if the number of EU working languages is reduced. We use the data on language proficiency in EU and show that, in spite of the widespread knowledge of English, the retention of French and German as working languages in essential...

This paper aims to show that due to the increase in mass English-Russian bilingualism the notion of lexical variation generated by Englishization should not be restricted to the traditionally studied opposition of English loanwords vs. their host language equivalents, but should be broadened to...

This paper describes the sociolinguistic situation of Mehweb, a lect of the Dargwa branch of East Caucasian, in the Republic of Daghestan. In the course of several field trips to the village of Mehweb, sociolinguistic interviews were conducted in four neighbouring Avar- and Lak-speaking...

In this paper, a description of sentential negation makers in Russian Sign Language (RSL) is provided. Two types of these markers exist. The first one is a negative sign – a manual negator. The second type is markers that are expressed by facial expressions, and head movements – non-manual...

This paper aims at describing the syntactic and semantic properties of gradable predicates in Russian Sign Language (RSL). Property signs in RSL, such as BIG or BEAUTIFUL, generally behave similarly to stative predicates. However, their compatibility with the degree modifiers and aspectual...

While spoken languages primarily make use of the acoustic-auditory modality, sign languages use visual-gestural modality. This results in structural differences between those languages. Sign language properties are especially intriguing due to three domains used to convey linguistic information:...