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
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Gender distinction
Gender agreement
Case acquisition
Animacy
Verbal aspect
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Gender distinction: rules and challenges
Three genders
 Masculine words end in a consonant: soldát.
 Feminine words end in -a: máma.
 Neuter words end in -o/-e: mésto ‘place’.
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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’
jábloko ‘apple’
rýbk[ә]
jáblok[ә]
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Monolingual vs. bilingual gender acquisition
Monolingual
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Distinction between regular feminine and masculine words:
Age 2;0–3;0 (Eliseeva, 2005)
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Age 5;0–6;0
Distinction between regular feminine and neuter words with
final stress:
Age 3;0–4;0 (Cejtlin, 2009)
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Bilingual
Age 6;6–7;0
Distinction between feminine and neuter words with
unstressed endings:
???
Age > 7;0
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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’.
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Gender agreement: bilingual
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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.’
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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.’
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Case acquisition: monolingual
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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).
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Age 2;6-4;6 — different case meanings and contexts;
animacy; regular inflectional patterns
(Zemskaja, 2004; Cejtlin, 2009).
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Age 4;6-6;0/7;0 — complete command of irregular and
infrequent inflectional forms
(Eliseeva, 2005).
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Case acquisition: bilingual
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Age < 4;6 — ‘frozen’ nominatives – mini-paradigm of two
case forms in the singular.
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.’
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Case acquisition: bilingual
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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’.
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Age < 7;0 — only nominative and default genitive in the plural.
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Animacy: monolingual vs. bilingual
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Monolingual: age 4;0 — distinction between animate and
inanimate nouns:
6) Ja vižu stol-Ø
I
see table-m.sg.acc.
vs.
Ja vižu mal’čika.
vs.
I
‘I see a table.’
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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
I
mal’čik> [: etogo mal’čika] davno
this-m.sg.nom. boy-m.sg.nom.
znaju.
for a long time know
‘I know this boy for a long time.’
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Verbal aspect: monolingual
Two aspects
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9)
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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’,
budu govorit’ ‘I will say’
pišu ‘I write’,
budu pisat’ ‘I will 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’,
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skažet ‘he will say’
napišu ‘she will write’
A clear idea of aspect competition in the past and future
tense — Age 2;6.
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Verbal aspect: bilingual
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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.’
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In the future tense, an auxiliary verb is combined with
perfective infinitives:
13) Zavtra <budem dosmotrit’> [: dosmotrim] fil’m.
tomorrow
will-1pl. to-the-end-watch-inf.perf.
movie
‘Tomorrow we will watch the movie to the end.’
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Bilingual acquisition: what do they know at
age 6-7?
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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.
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Bilingual acquisition: what do they know at
age 6-7?
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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.
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Questions?
[email protected]
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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.
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