On Russian morphology in bilingual Dutch Russian children
On Russian morphology in bilingual Dutch. Russian children at age 6 -7 Alla Peeters-Podgaevskaja Discourse Coherence in Bilingualism and SLI 31 January 2012
This presentation n n Gender distinction Gender agreement Case acquisition Animacy Verbal aspect 2
Gender distinction: rules and challenges Three genders n Masculine words end in a consonant: soldát. n Feminine words end in -a: máma. n Neuter words end in -o/-e: mésto ‘place’. n n n Feminine words end in a soft consonant: rol’. Masculine words end in -a: pápa. Allophony of a-words and o-words with unstressed reduced inflectional suffixes: rýbka ‘little fish’ rýbk[ә] jábloko ‘apple’ jáblok[ә] 3
Monolingual vs. bilingual gender acquisition Monolingual n Distinction between regular feminine and masculine words: Age 2; 0– 3; 0 (Eliseeva, 2005) n Age 5; 0– 6; 0 Distinction between regular feminine and neuter words with final stress: Age 3; 0– 4; 0 (Cejtlin, 2009) n Bilingual Age 6; 6– 7; 0 Distinction between feminine and neuter words with unstressed endings: ? ? ? Age > 7; 0 4
Gender agreement: monolingual At age 3; 6 gender agreement is acquired (Popova, 1973). 1) Moja krasivaja kniga ležala na stole. My-f. sg. nom. nice-f. sg. nom. book-f. sg. nom. lay-f. sg. on table ‘My nice book was on the table’. 5
Gender agreement: bilingual n Subject-verb non-agreement 2) Koška eta rybka <videl> [: videla]. cat-f. sg. nom. this-f. sg. nom. fish-f. sg. nom. saw-m. sg. ‘A cat saw this fish. ’ n Noun-adjective non-agreement 3) …kogda mama byla when <malen’kij> [: malen’kaja] mamma was-f. sg. little-m. sg. nom. ‘…when mamma was young. ’ 6
Case acquisition: monolingual n Age 1; 8 -2; 6 — ‘frozen’ nominatives – basic functions and forms of the case system in the singular (Babyonyshev, 1993; Gordishevsky & Schaeffer, 2008; Cejtlin, 2009). n Age 2; 6 -4; 6 — different case meanings and contexts; animacy; regular inflectional patterns (Zemskaja, 2004; Cejtlin, 2009). n Age 4; 6 -6; 0/7; 0 — complete command of irregular and infrequent inflectional forms (Eliseeva, 2005). 7
Case acquisition: bilingual n Age < 4; 6 — ‘frozen’ nominatives – mini-paradigm of two case forms in the singular. n Age > 5; 6 — in the singular, nominative-accusative opposition is not acquired without mistakes: 4) Koška <eta rybka> [: etu rubku] videl. cat-f. sg. nom. this-f. sg. nom. fish-f. sg. nom. saw-m. sg. ‘A cat saw this fish. ’ 8
Case acquisition: bilingual n Age < 6; 6 — no dative, instrumental or prepositional case inflections: 5) … čto <motocikl> [: motociklu] zdes’ nel’zja exat’. that motor bike-m. sg. nom. here may not ride ‘[You have already said] that the motor bike may not ride here’. n Age < 7; 0 — only nominative and default genitive in the plural. 9
Animacy: monolingual vs. bilingual n Monolingual: age 4; 0 — distinction between animate and inanimate nouns: 6) Ja vižu stol-Ø I see table-m. sg. acc. ‘I see a table. ’ n vs. Ja vižu mal’čika. I see boy-m. sg. acc. an. ‘I see a boy. ’ Bilingual: age 6; 0 -7; 0 — no distinction between animate and inanimate nouns: 7) Ja <etot mal’čik> [: etogo mal’čika] davno znaju. I this-m. sg. nom. boy-m. sg. nom. for a long time know ‘I know this boy for a long time. ’ 10
Verbal aspect: monolingual Two aspects n 8) 9) n Imperfective: process, habituality, general idea of action or state, etc. ; three tenses (past, present and future): ja govoril ‘I said’, ja pisala ‘I wrote’, govorju ‘I say’, pišu ‘I write’, Perfective: totality, terminativity, sequence connection of actions, situations, etc. ; two tenses (past and future): 10) on skazal ‘he said’, 11) ona napisala ‘she wrote’, n budu govorit’ ‘I will say’ budu pisat’ ‘I will write’ skažet ‘he will say’ napišu ‘she will write’ A clear idea of aspect competition in the past and future tense — Age 2; 6. 11
Verbal aspect: bilingual n Age 6; 6 -7; 0 — perfective forms are used in imperfective contexts: 12) On mne vsegda <skazal> [: govoril]. he to me always said-m. sg. perf. ‘He always said it to me. ’ n In the future tense, an auxiliary verb is combined with perfective infinitives: 13) Zavtra <budem dosmotrit’> [: dosmotrim] fil’m. tomorrow will-1 pl. to-the-end-watch-inf. perf. movie ‘Tomorrow we will watch the movie to the end. ’ 12
Bilingual acquisition: what do they know at age 6 -7? n n n Bilingual children master the number category, and make a clear distinction between singular and plural in the nominative. They make gender distinction between regular feminine and masculine words. They have acquired three to four cases (nominative, genitive and accusative) in the most salient and transparent contexts. 13
Bilingual acquisition: what do they know at age 6 -7? n n They have a rich repertory of personal pronouns in different cases and actively use them in many syntactic constructions. They have a limited knowledge of prepositions which they use in various spatial, temporal, causal, and possessive contexts. They correctly form verbal paradigm in the three tenses. They actively use imperative and infinitive constructions. 14
Questions? A. V. Peeters-Podgaevskaja@uva. nl 15
References Babyonyshev, M. 1993. Acquisition of the Russian Case System. In C. Phillips (Ed. ), Papers on Case and Agreement II, vol. 19 (pp. 1 -43). Cambridge. Cejtlin, S. N. 2009. Očerki po slovoobrazovaniju i formoobrazovaniju v detskoj reči. Moskva. Gordishevsky, G. & Schaeffer, J. 2008. The development and interaction of Case and Number in early Russian. In P. G. Fuentes, M. P. Larranaga & J. Clibens (Eds. ), First Language Acquisition of Morphology and Syntax (pp. 31 -59). Amsterdam – Philadelphia. Eliseeva, M. B. 2005. Razvitie reči rebenka: vzgljad lingvista. Issledovanija, 4. 18 -28. Popova, M. I. 1973. ‘Grammatical Elements of Language in the Speech of Pre-Preschool Children’. In C. A. Ferguson & D. I. Slobin (Eds. ) Studies of Child Language Development (pp. 269 -280). New York. Voeikova, M. D. 2011. Rannie etapy usvoenija det’mi imennoj morfologii russkogo jazyka. Moskva: Znak. Zemskaja, E. A. (Ed. ) 2004. Jazyk kak dejatel’nost’. Morfema. Slovo. Reč’. Moscow. 16
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