International Journal of Bilingualism

What are the reason(s) for writing the paper. What are the aims and objectives of the research? What are the research questions the research aims to address? The aim of this study is to compare and contrast null objects in Paraguayan Spanish and Paraguayan Guarani to revisit the hypothesis that the high rate of null objects in Paraguayan Spanish is due to contact with Guarani. The study thus aims to address the following questions: How do Paraguayan Spanish null objects compare to null objects in Guarani in spontaneous speech? Do people who code-switch between Spanish and Guarani have a higher rate of null object in their Spanish?

How are the objectives achieved? What is the scope of the research? What are the main method(s) used for the research? What is the methodological approach to the topic? A usage-based approach to language guides the present study. Proposed linguistic patterns for Spanish and for Guarani emerge from the thorough exploration of authentic naturalistic speech.

What is the database for the research, including sample size? How are the data analyzed? A total of 6,972 transitive sentences were extracted from CEGPA (Corpus del Español y Guaraní Paraguayos de Asunción), a database of 14 speakers of Paraguayan Spanish (25,374 intonation units). The sentences were coded by language, object type, object animacy, verb lexemes, and social factors.

What are the key findings of the research? What conclusions can be drawn from the research? Null object patterns in Paraguayan Spanish are almost identical to those in Guarani, a language without object pronouns for inanimate objects. In Spanish, speakers who code-switch between Guarani and Spanish never used the direct object clitic to refer to an inanimate object; they used null instantiation instead. Non-code-switchers preferred null objects over clitics 98% of the time. Animate null objects were rare across languages and speakers.

What is new or different in the paper in terms of theory, method, and/or finding? To test the contact hypothesis, the study explores null object rates in both languages and compares them side by side, which has not been previously done in the case of Paraguayan Spanish and Guarani.

What is the theoretical value of the research? What are the methodological implications of the research? What are the implications for policy and practice, if applicable? This research contributes to the understanding of Paraguayan Spanish as a contact variety and to the limited studies on Guarani from a corpus and usage-based perspective. It also shows that an in-depth comparison between linguistic patterns between two languages can elucidate whether or not certain features originate from contact.

What are the limitations of the research? What suggestions for future research can be made? Elicitation tasks can help study more nuances among null objects across languages, for example, the effect of object semantics on animate null objects. More information about the linguistic profile of each speaker can also contribute to better understanding null object phenomena.

This study empirically examines cross-linguistic interference and gender‑based differences in the production of third-person subjects in both languages (Spanish and English) of balanced bilingual Latinx children in eastern North Carolina.

We elicited picture-book retells of Mayer’s “Frog, where are you?” in both languages of 14 bilingual kindergarten children (mean age of 67 months).

We explored 817 tensed verb phrases to examine how language mode (Spanish/English), gender (boys/girls), and linguistic factors (e.g., topic continuity and number) affected subject expression across languages.

Results indicate significant differences in subject form rates based on language mode, gender, topic continuity, and verb number. The children show a general command of the linguistic constraints for subject expression in each language, with girls using more null subjects than boys in Spanish mode.

We test subject expression in both languages of each bilingual participant to explore gender-based language variation among children in a region with a fast-growing Latinx population.

The children have similar proficiencies in both languages, which offers a snapshot of the developing bilingual system when the effects of language interference may be lessened. At a young age, these bilingual kindergarteners are sensitive to the linguistic patterning of each language, with differences based on gender adding to our understanding of subject expression.

This study explores how L2 learners in an L1 environment resolve semantic interference from interlexical homographs, examining links with general cognitive control, reactive/proactive cognitive control, and L2 proficiency.

A cross-sectional design was employed with 29 Spanish–English bilingual university students. Participants completed a Semantic Judgment Task to assess semantic interference, along with tasks measuring general cognitive control and control strategy preference. L2 proficiency was assessed using standardized tests.

Accuracy and reaction times in the Semantic Judgment Task served as dependent variables, with L2 proficiency, general cognitive control, and control mode preference (proactive vs reactive) as predictors. Mixed-effects models included random intercepts and slopes for participants and items to account for variability.

Performance was strongly determined by condition, with interlexical homographs (C1) yielding the lowest accuracy and slowest RTs. Beyond this condition effect, higher L2 proficiency and better general control predicted greater accuracy. Proactive versus reactive tendencies also modulated accuracy, with more reactive individuals performing better overall, though Behavioral Index Shift did not significantly affect RTs. These findings suggest that both linguistic proficiency and individual differences in control strategies shape bilingual word recognition under semantic judgment.

This study contributes novel evidence by focusing on L2 learners in an L1-dominant environment, a population underrepresented in bilingualism research, and by examining the interaction between cognitive control strategies and proficiency outside immersion contexts.

Findings suggest that academic exposure alone does not guarantee greater reliance on proactive control. Instead, reactive control may be more adaptive when resolving interlexical competition, with implications for pedagogical approaches that support L2 processing in academic settings.

The study evaluated mixed-language sentences from a population of first grade bilingual children to better understand Cross-Language Interaction in different aspects of bilingual ability.

Individual assessment elicited responses from participants in both languages they speak, Vietnamese and Thái, based on a graphic display of narrative genre, one story representation for each language.

Children’s bilingual codeswitching responses were analyzed for grammatical well-formedness in constituents where the two languages come into contact. In addition, a significant difference appeared in language choice for bilingual speech between the Vietnamese and Thái assessment settings.

Consistent patterns of alternation in bilingual speech between Vietnamese and Thái constituents revealed the ability by children to separate the two language systems. Discussion of the above mentioned difference in language choice in mixed-language passages points to important opportunities for future research on language shift.

The study is the first analysis of bilingual speech in this age group that examines the language contact between Vietnamese and one of the official minority languages of the country.

The study of bilingual speech in young children is important because language contact and dual-language processing coincide with preschool child language development. For this age group, the competence that is revealed in switching, alternation, substitution and insertion is related to other bilingual competences.

The article aims to show that corpora have made it possible to expand the field of phraseology and gain a better understanding of multiword units, including in foreign or second language learning and teaching. At the same time, however, it argues that corpora cannot answer all questions related to multiword units in and for learners and it therefore pleads for the combination of corpora with other sources of information.

The article first describes the contributions of corpora to phraseology, emphasizing that several essential aspects of multiword units are not accessible to intuition and require the use of corpora. It then highlights the limitations of corpus linguistics when it comes to the study of multiword units in and for learners and shows how these limitations can be overcome by combining corpora with other sources of information.

Linguistic expertise, experimentation and pedagogical experience are presented as useful complements to the corpus study of multiword units in and for learners, allowing for the investigation of additional aspects such as the functional classification of multiword units, their mental representations or their teachability. The article mentions different ways of combining these sources of information and underlines some of the challenges involved in combining them.

While multiword units have often been approached from a single perspective, using one source of information, this article argues for methodological pluralism and triangulation, claiming that multiword units in and for learners can be approached more comprehensively through the combination of several sources of information.

Some researchers propose that using a second language (L2) enhances empathy by broadening perspectives, while studies on the foreign-language effect suggest L2 may reduce empathy by dampening emotions and increasing cognitive control. This study examines the influence of L1 and L2 on empathy and ethnocentrism, employing virtual reality (VR), a tool fostering understanding of diverse perspectives.

Polish university students, late bilinguals (N = 111), participated in a 2 (L1 vs. L2) × 3 (Pretest, Posttest 1, Posttest 2) mixed-design study, with all materials and subtitles in the assigned language. During a 9-minute VR experience, participants embodied Polish and Chinese students involved in a misunderstanding, heard their thoughts, and received cultural explanations.

L2 exposure significantly enhanced cognitive empathy and reduced ethnocentrism immediately after the VR experience, with cognitive empathy remaining elevated 2 weeks later.

Results suggest that foreign language use in immersive VR environments may facilitate perspective-taking and cultural understanding through mechanisms consistent with the stunted intuitions model and cultural frame-switching.

As the first to test the foreign-language effect in VR, we situated our findings within existing literature and outlined future research directions.

The aim of this study is to examine how the transition to motherhood, or “matrescence,” a lifelong evolution featuring complex emotional experiences, changes the emotional connection one has with a heritage language (HL) and to enhance understanding of how those changes are both affected by and affect heritage language maintenance (HLM) and language practices in the family.

This study is part of a narrative inquiry project titled, “Multilingual Mothering,” investigating the lived experiences and emotions of mothers raising multilingual children. The focus is on one open-ended question that was asked as part of a questionnaire. Reflexive thematic analysis within a broadly critical realist position was used to develop, analyse and interpret patterns across the dataset.

Data were collected from 291 mothers residing in linguistically different societies. This paper presents an analysis of responses to a question asking participants how their emotional connection to their HL had changed since becoming mothers. Through reflexive TA, four main themes were identified under a central concept of “Care and Responsibility.”

The four themes: Practical, Prominent and (Un)Natural; My Heritage, My Language: Memory and Duty; Expectations and Enough: Letting Go and Coming Together and Acts of Mothering: Re-enacting and Reimagining. The analysis reveals that the shift in connection to an HL after motherhood is not merely an individual or natural progression but is deeply intertwined with numerous experiences and changes.

This is the first study the author is aware of that explores how the transition to motherhood may affect a connection to an HL, and how that change affects HLM and family language practices.

Findings provide further evidence for a two-way relationship, whereby the transition to motherhood is both affected by and affects language practices in the family.

This article concerns the interdisciplinary scholarship on language, migration, and gender in a trading community in Yiwu, China.

I adopt a poststructuralist approach and draw on stories of two Arab women – Nadeen and Yiyi – to consider L2 investment as a way to negotiate different identities, of gender and of being a migrant, in a new country away from home.

The ethnographic data, including observation, fieldnotes, casual chats, in-depth interviews, and artefacts, were analysed thematically.

The results show that Chinese was imagined as a means to pursue personal fulfilments and resist feminised roles imposed by the mainstream society, as both participants agentively invested in Chinese language learning. Importantly, the findings reveal gendered access to L2 resources beyond the home, which led women’s limited opportunities to practice Chinese and the reproduction of unequal gender relations within family.

This study brings a nuanced understanding of gender into gender-blindness Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) education research.

The significance and contribution of this article centre on extending our understanding of the relationship between gender, migration and L2 learning in an under-research context. It also throws light on how language can empower migrant women to resist the domination that stems from unequal gender and social relations in South-South migration.

This paper reports on an empirical study in which native speakers of Chinese (a wh-in situ language) of advanced L2 English (an obligatory wh-movement language) acquire L3 French (a language that allows variant wh-constructions) in the initial state. The findings are discussed in the context of the Cumulative Enhancement Model (CEM) and the Derivational Complexity Metric (DCM) Model, as to what gives rise to nonnative acquisition in subsequent language development.

A total of 85 participants were recruited for the study, comprising two experimental groups and two control groups serving as baseline comparisons. Participants completed two forced-choice elicitation tasks and two translation tasks.

Statistical analyses were carried out using mixed-model ANOVAs. Significant effects were followed up with Bonferroni-adjusted post hoc tests to control for multiple comparisons. Performance by native speakers was incorporated as a benchmark.

Although no significant differences are found between the learner group and a French control group in the interpretation of the Wh-in situ and Wh-fronting with inversion constructions, learners differ significantly from the native group in interpreting the Plain wh-fronting, Wh-fronting with ESK, and Wh-fronting with clefting constructions. The results appear to be consistent with the Cumulative Enhancement Model (CEM), which holds the view that all languages previously learned may be beneficial in subsequent language acquisition.

This study represents one of the few attempts to investigate the acquisition of French wh-questions in the initial state by L1 Chinese speakers with advanced L2 English. The study contributes new empirical evidence to the ongoing debate concerning the nature of the L3 initial state. The findings highlight the complex interplay among structural complexity, L1 transfer, and input, all of which play a crucial and interrelated role in L3 acquisition.

This study examines the early development of receptive and productive vocabulary in a minority language (Catalan) among children aged 10 to 18 months growing up in a bilingual social context (Catalan-Spanish). The study investigates whether a lower degree of exposure to Spanish favors greater development in Catalan and explores how age influences this development.

A total of 463 children aged 10 to 18 months participated in the study. They were distributed into three groups based on their linguistic context (Monolinguals, Social Bilinguals, and Home Bilinguals). Their receptive and productive vocabulary was measured using the Catalan adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI inventory (8–18 months version).

The data were analyzed using SPSS to examine the effects of linguistic context on children’s receptive and productive vocabulary, with developmental differences across age groups assessed through multivariate analysis (MANOVA), followed by univariate ANOVA and Tukey’s HSD tests. The results about exposure levels show that Catalan children from a bilingual social context have a larger vocabulary than their peers, with statistically significant differences observed only in receptive vocabulary. Concerning the influence of age, we found that the linguistic context affects only receptive vocabulary in the oldest group (16–18 months).

The findings suggest that social bilingualism provides more varied and enriched linguistic input compared with other linguistic contexts, thereby fostering receptive vocabulary development.

Unlike most bilingual research focusing on production, this study explores both receptive and productive vocabulary in very young children (10–18 months). In addition, it examines how different linguistic exposure contexts influence language development, addressing a gap in studies on early bilingual acquisition.

The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to factors such as overall vocabulary assessment, typological similarity between the languages, and the presence of cognate words. These results underscore the potential benefits for both assessment and educational intervention in Catalan-Spanish bilingual children.

Bilingual aphasia presents unique challenges due to the interaction of multiple language systems. This study investigates the role of cognates, words that share origin and form across languages, on verb naming in Kurdish-Persian bilinguals with and without aphasia, addressing a gap in existing research that primarily focuses on nouns.

A cross-sectional study compared nine Kurdish-Persian bilinguals with aphasia following left-hemisphere stroke to 40 healthy bilingual controls. Participants completed a verb-naming task using 90 verbs (42 cognates, 48 non-cognates) presented visually in both Kurdish (L1) and Persian (L2) using DMDX software, with a 1-week interval between assessments. Accuracy and reaction time were the primary outcome measures.

Accuracy was scored as correct (1) for cognate and non-cognate verbs in each language, and mean reaction times were analyzed. Correlations between accuracy and speed were examined within and across groups.

Results indicated that healthy participants outperformed bilingual persons with aphasia (BPWA) in both accuracy and speed for verb naming. Both groups exhibited a cognate advantage, with BPWA showing a more pronounced difference in performance, particularly for L1 non-cognates. The findings suggest that shared phonological representations in cognates facilitate lexical access, particularly beneficial for individuals with aphasia.

This study uniquely focuses on verb naming in Kurdish-Persian bilingual aphasia, a population under-represented in the literature. Most prior research on cognate effects in bilingual aphasia has concentrated on nouns.

The findings highlight the importance of considering linguistic factors like cognate status in assessing and treating bilingual aphasia. The cognate advantage suggests the potential for using cognates in therapeutic interventions to improve lexical retrieval and communication skills in BPWA. Therapeutic strategies utilizing cognate verbs may enhance recovery outcomes for bilingual individuals, warranting further exploration within diverse bilingual communities.

Pronominal resolution in Italian-style null-subject languages has played a central role in the discussion of how acquiring a second language later in life may impact the first, a phenomenon known as attrition. Within that literature, previous (offline) work has argued that attrition leads to a weakening of the interpretive bias for overt pronouns. This has been suggested to reflect processing difficulties rather than representational changes. However, despite this explicit processing claim, little published work has investigated how the online processing of pronominal forms in these languages is affected by attrition.

In response, we conducted a self-paced reading task in Italian using temporarily ambiguous stimuli. For this, we recruited L1 Italian speakers living both in Italy (N = 66) and in a majority English-speaking country (N = 32, minimum 5 years of residency).

Reading times from the disambiguating windows were subjected to mixed-effects regressions.

Results indicated participants undergoing attrition exhibited a stronger – not weaker – processing bias for overt pronouns relative to participants still living in Italy (at least towards the beginning of the experiment).

This study is original for two reasons. First, it addresses the gap in research investigating attrition and pronominal resolution from an online perspective. Second, it extends a recently reported offline strengthening effect for overt pronouns to online processing.

Although our results seem to conflict with earlier online findings, they are convergent with recent offline findings. Moreover, there is evidence from other phenomena relating to the null-subject parameter (e.g. null/postverbal subjects) that attrition may lead to a general strengthening of L1 biases. Therefore, we argue that attrition affects overt pronouns inconsistently, with future research needed to understand why this should be the case.

This study aims to provide new insights into the creativity of nominal compounds in multilinguals. We ask whether mixed and unmixed compounds in Malay-English language contact follow Malay or English rules for the headedness of compounds and how pluralisation rules are applied to compounds across both languages. We also ask whether any innovative forms qualify as examples of rule-governed or rule-changing creativity.

We analyse data from the existing literature on compounding in Malay and English, as well as data from a corpus of over a thousand utterances with intrasentential code-switching, collected by Majid (2019) among teachers of English in Malaysia.

A qualitative analysis is made of the headedness of different nominal compounds and of the way in which these are pluralised.

We found that Malay compounds in the data were generally left-headed and English compounds right-headed, but the directionality of mixed compounds depended largely on the language of the clause in which they appear: in Malaysian English short stories and newspapers, mixed compounds were right-headed, while they were left-headed in Malay clauses in the speech of teachers.

The study brings together insights from the literature on creativity and insights from studies on nominal compounding. As in most studies of compounds, the constructions are studied in isolation, the current study is novel in that the language of the clause in which the compounds appear is also analysed. Finally, we bring together insights from the study of compounding in children as well as young adults, showing that the data from young adults are more likely to lead to rule-changing creativity.

The study makes a contribution to our understanding of the ways in which language contact affects variability in compounding and can provide new insights into the separability of grammars in language contact.

This study examines Spolsky’s tripartite family language policy framework of Bengali as a heritage language (HL) among intra-national immigrants in New York City (NYC).

Data comprised a non-random purposive survey and semi-structured interviews. The survey data were analysed using descriptive and inferential analysis, and the interviews were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. Recurring themes and selected excerpts were aligned with the survey results to highlight and conceptualise broader social patterns.

The findings indicate a generational shift from bilingualism to English-dominant monolingualism in Bangladeshi immigrant families. Parents ideologically preferred Bengali and supported bilingualism for cultural and intergenerational ties. However, they demonstrate a strong inclination towards English management while supplementing Bengali through home, educational and community strategies. Furthermore, children consistently preferred English across all domains of the framework. Barriers to HL maintenance included perceived limited relevance and value, constrained resources, assimilation pressure and parental insufficient awareness.

This study suggests targeted support mechanisms to promote for HL maintenance in understudied NYC communities.

Students who immigrate to a new country are commonly expected to “catch up” to their mainstream peers in language and academics and to complete their education in the new language and culture. Yet little is known about recent immigrants’ academic trajectories, particularly in Germany, where research remains scarce despite the relatively high proportion of children who immigrate after the start of mandatory schooling (age 6 or later). This study focused on reading as a central skill for literacy and school achievement.

The study invoked standardized tests of reading fluency, reading comprehension and vocabulary among 76 (+13) recently immigrated students and 192 of their non-immigrated peers in eight lower secondary schools in spring 2022 and followed up on a small subgroup annually for 2 years to provide exploratory information on learning trajectories.

Analyses using mixed-effects models compared the reading performance of immigrated and non-immigrated students. In addition, individual factors such as vocabulary breadth were analyzed to determine their impact on reading development.

Immigrated students consistently scored below their non-immigrated peers across all reading measures, with average performance gaps ranging from 0.2 to 1.2 standard deviations. Longitudinal follow-ups indicated little evidence that these students were closing the gap over time, though individual differences, particularly vocabulary breadth, had some effects.

This study contributes novel insights into the long-term academic development of immigrated students in Germany, an understudied population in this context. It highlights the challenges faced by these students in acquiring academic language skills and the limitations of data collection instruments.

The findings highlight the need to clarify realistic literacy expectations for immigrant students and to better understand how their literacy trajectories vary. Such insight can guide policies and instructional practices that provide developmentally appropriate, linguistically responsive support.

Code-mixing is increasingly recognized as a resource for identity performance in digitally mediated language use. This study investigates how French-speaking learners of Bahasa Indonesia (BIPA) perform plurilingual identities through code-mixing on Instagram Reels. A qualitative digital discourse analysis was conducted on 30 publicly accessible videos posted by three French-speaking BIPA learners with active Indonesian audiences. Multimodal transcripts were examined using Muysken’s typology, Coupland’s stylization, and Silverstein’s indexicality to analyze linguistic alternation alongside captions, hashtags, and platform-specific affordances.

The findings show that code-mixing is dominated by insertion practices strategically placed at humorous or emphatic moments. Indonesian consistently appears as the matrix code to index cultural alignment and legitimacy, while English and French support pragmatic clarity, cosmopolitan self-branding, and playful stance. Algorithmic visibility and interface features such as looping videos, animated subtitles, and trending audio shape how multilingual performances are curated and circulated, highlighting Instagram as an identity-producing environment rather than a neutral medium.

This study contributes to emerging scholarship on learner-generated multilingualism in Global South media spaces by showing that L3/L4 learners deploy code-mixing not as linguistic compensation but as socially valued persona work. Pedagogically, the findings point to the potential of social media as a space for plurilingual meaning-making that supports affective confidence, audience-aware communication, and deeper participation in Indonesian-speaking communities.

The purpose of this study was to examine how visual speech cues impact the ability to recognize words in the presence of background noise in toddlers who vary in language exposure (i.e., being raised bilingual or monolingual).

Seventy-two children (36 monolinguals and 36 bilinguals) between the ages of 24 and 35 months completed an online Preferential Looking task where they saw picture-pairs of familiar objects (e.g., balloon and apple) on a screen and heard sentences instructing them to locate one of the objects (e.g., look at the apple!). Speech was heard in quiet and in the presence of competing noise, and with or without visual speech cues.

Children’s eye movements were coded offline. We then identified the proportion of time they fixated on the correct object on the screen. Performance within and between groups was compared using linear mixed effects models.

Bilinguals performed worse than monolinguals when there was both noise and no visual speech cues present. Within group differences showed that monolinguals performed similarly in every condition while bilinguals had significantly lower accuracy in every condition compared to the easiest condition (i.e., visual speech cues present without noise).

This is the first study to examine how the presence of visual speech cues impacts word recognition in noise in both monolingual and bilingual infants.

High noise levels are present in everyday environments and children might not always have access to visual speech cues while hearing speech. Thus, this work has implications for learning and education practices with young bilinguals.

We used an indirect measure of noise in the home to explore how this related to processing in noise in a laboratory task. Future work should use a direct measure of noise in the home to further explore this.

In culturally and linguistically adjacent contexts, learning and using an additional language may entail not only foreign-language development but also early processes of bilingualisation. This study investigates fear of assimilation as an affective barrier to L2 Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in Spanish among Portuguese university students. It addresses three key research questions: (1) To what extent does fear of assimilation influence L2WTC? (2) Does fear of assimilation mediate the relationship between attitudes towards Spanish-speaking communities and L2WTC? (3) Are there gender-based differences in attitudes and fear of assimilation?

Adopting a cross-sectional, quantitative design, the study tested a moderated mediation model to explore direct, indirect, and interaction effects among the variables. Instruments measuring intergroup attitudes, fear of assimilation, and L2WTC were administered.

The sample comprised 192 Portuguese university students enrolled in Spanish language courses. Data were analysed using regression-based mediation and moderation analyses with bootstrapping (jAMM module, Jamovi), following exclusion of outliers through Mahalanobis distance testing.

Fear of assimilation emerged as a significant negative predictor of L2WTC, confirming its role as an affective obstacle. However, it did not function as a mediating variable between attitudes and L2WTC. While gender differences were observed in the levels of attitudes and fear, no significant moderation effects were detected in the structural model.

This study provides the first empirical test of fear of assimilation as an independent psychological factor influencing WTC in a context of linguistic proximity, advancing current models of affect in emerging bilingualism processes.

Findings underscore the importance of integrating identity-sensitive pedagogical strategies in L2 education. The study offers theoretical contributions to second language acquisition (SLA) models by delineating how perceived identity threat operates alongside (rather than through) cultural attitudes in shaping communicative engagement and emergent bilingual practices.

This study examines how English-related expectations shape employee subjectivities in a globalizing Korean corporate workplace, focusing on the intersection of language ideology, power, and institutional practice.

The study adopts a qualitative approach informed by linguistic governmentality and Park’s ideology complex.

Data consist of narrative frames collected from 24 employees and bilingual semi-structured interviews with five participants working in a Korean manufacturing company. The data were analyzed using a paradigmatic narrative procedure, involving iterative coding and thematic development to examine how employees interpret English-related expectations and how these experiences shape subjectivity.

The findings show that English functions simultaneously as symbolic capital and a disciplinary mechanism, producing stratified subjectivities through processes of responsibilization, self-surveillance, and affective labor. Employees navigate ambiguous and uneven language expectations, resulting in differentiated access to recognition, participation, and advancement.

The study extends research on workplace English by integrating linguistic governmentality with Korea-specific language ideologies in an adult corporate context, demonstrating how global language regimes are locally rearticulated through affect, evaluation, and institutional ambiguity.

The study contributes theoretically to scholarship on language, neoliberalism, and subject formation, and offers practical implications for corporate language policy by highlighting the need for clearer, role-specific language expectations and institutional responsibility for multilingual support in both Korean and global workplace contexts.

Under Soviet rule, established Russian-based bilingualism triggered language shift and attrition in indigenous languages, particularly in L1 Kazakh. This study investigates the revitalisation of Kazakh in multilingual Kazakhstan following its independence in 1991. It focuses on speakers whose L1 Kazakh was replaced by L1 Russian during their socialisation, resulting in a loss of nativeness in their L1 Kazakh and rendering it their heritage language. The main research question is how the current reversing language shift manifests in a core grammatical domain – aspectuality – particularly regarding resultativity, a salient marker of nativeness with symbolic significance in language revival.

We adopted a quantitative, cross-sectional design, comparing usage patterns of aspectuality across three speaker groups (one control, two experimental): L1 Kazakh speakers (n = 32), L1 Russian speakers (n = 30), and heritage Kazakh speakers whose L1 was replaced by Russian (n = 33). Targeted survey tasks assessed proficiency in resultativity, allowing examination of how bilingual experience and previous language shift influence core grammatical knowledge.

When analysing our corpus, we evaluated the stability and variability of aspectual marking in each group. We examined whether, and in what ways, reversing language shift from Russian to Kazakh emerges in this core grammatical domain. Comparative analyses across three groups allowed assessment of the extent of language revival.

The results indicate that aspectuality reliably reflects nativeness: L1 Kazakh speakers show greater stability in aspectual marking, whereas heritage Kazakh speakers with dominant Russian display increased variability, reflecting ongoing influence of dominant Russian. However, when compared with L1 Russian speakers with L2 Kazakh, heritage Kazakh speakers demonstrate a higher index of nativeness in use of Kazakh aspectuality. From a cross-linguistic perspective, as aspectuality is expressed in fundamentally different ways in Kazakh and Russian, languages with different typological profiles, contact with Russian provides no structural support for maintaining this category in Kazakh.

This study contributes novel evidence to the underexplored area of post-Soviet language revival, highlighting the role of aspectuality as a grammatical marker of nativeness. Unlike previous mostly sociolinguistic research on postcolonial language revival, this study focuses on the linguistic effects of Russian dominance on a particular indigenous language – Kazakh.

The findings advance theoretical understanding of language revival, nativeness, and sustainable linguistic effect of post-imperial bilingualism. They offer a foundation for future research on heritage indigenous languages in post-imperial contexts, in particular, on the territory of the former USSR. In addition, the study contributes to comparative research on aspectuality in typologically different languages.