Integration, Identity and Language Maintenance in Young Immigrants

Abstract The paper deals with parental input and its role for heritage language maintenance by second generation speakers of Russian in Germany. Based on the data collected from one family, we investigate the realization of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Russian by the parents and their children. Our main findings show that the children are already exposed to deviant input if compared to VOT values reported for Russian monolinguals. However, the children’s VOT values do not coincide with their parent