The acquisition of aspectuality by Russian children : the early stages

The article deals with the analysis of the development of aspectuality at the early stages of the acquisition of Russian. Data from seven children are investigated for this purpose. It is claimed that the category of aspectuality, being the property of the whole utterance, can be expressed at the early stages of language acquisition even before the verb itself occurs. During this period some children mark the basic aspectual opposition "process-result" by the linguistic devices at their disposal, namely by various uses of sound imitations or onomatopoetics. Onomatopoetics, when used once, can be said to be the predecessors of perfective verbs, while reduplicative use of onomatopoetics seems to correspond to the imperfective aspect. The paper presents an analysis of the early verb lexicons of six children. Among their 24 earliest verbs both aspects are represented. As revealed by the analysis, aspect (and Aktionsart) clusters with tense in a specific way: imperfective verbs are mainly used in the present while perfectives are used mostly in the past

Early verb development in one russian-speaking child

This paper investigates the development of verbal inflection in the early stages of the acquisition of Russian. Data from tape recordings and a diary were used for this study

Case marking is different in monolingual and heritage Bosnian in digitally elicited oral texts

Heritage languages may differ from baseline languages spoken in the home country, particularly in the domains of vocabulary, morphosyntax and phonology. The success of acquiring and maintaining a heritage language may depend on a range of factors, from the age of acquisition of the second language; quantity and quality of input and frequency of first language use, to non-linguistic factors, such as Socio-Economic Status (SES). To investigate case marking accuracy in heritage Bosnian in relation to these very factors, we recruited 20 heritage Bosnian speakers in Austria and Germany, and 20 monolingual Bosnian speakers in Bosnia, aged between 18 and 30 years. Participants were assessed remotely in two sessions, on a battery of tests that included a background language questionnaire investigating participants' history of language acquisition, current usage and SES, and a newly adapted Bosnian version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). A significant difference in case marking accuracy was found between the two groups, despite the 97% correct performance in the heritage speakers, and an almost 100% performance of the monolinguals. In the heritage speakers group only, errors indicated a trend toward case system simplification as well as uncertainty in distinguishing between case meanings. The use of Bosnian, assessed through quantity and quality of input, as well as frequency of current usage, was shown to be a significant predictor of case marking accuracy in heritage speakers. In contrast, SES and age of acquisition of German did not play a role in these participants' case accuracy. The observed patterns of quantitative and qualitative differences in the case marking accuracy between heritage Bosnian speakers and their monolingual counterparts, in the face of a high level of accuracy, contribute to our understanding of the heritage language attainment in more diverse language dyads where L1 is a lesser studied language

Russian-German five-year-olds: What omissions in sentence repetition tell us about linguistic knowledge, memory skills and their interrelation

In error analyses using sentence repetition data, most authors focus on word types of omissions. The current study considers serial order in omission patterns independent of functional categories. Data was collected from Russian and German sentence repetition tasks performed by 53 five-year-old bilingual children. Number and positions of word omissions were analyzed. Serial order effects were found in both languages: medial errors made up the largest percentage of errors. Then, the position of omissions was compared to visuo-verbal n-back working memory and non-verbal visual forward short-term memory scores using stepwise hierarchical linear regression models, taking into account demographic variables and receptive language. The interaction differed between languages: there was a significant negative association between omissions in the medial position in German and the final position in Russian and the visuo-verbal n-back memory score. Our study contributes to the understanding of how working memory and language are intertwined in sentence repetition

Der Einfluss des elterlichen Inputs auf die Sprachentwicklung bilingualer Kinder: Evidenz aus russischsprachigen Migrantenfamilien in Berlin

"Der vorliegende Beitrag betrachtet den Einfluss des elterlichen Inputs auf die Sprachentwicklung bilingual aufwachsender Migrantenkinder. Dazu werden zunächst die Debatte sowie der aktuelle Forschungsstand bezüglich der Frage dargestellt, welche Sprache Eltern mit Migrationshintergrund mit ihren Kindern sprechen sollten, um deren Sprachentwicklung optimal zu unterstützen. Zur Klärung dieser Frage wird eine Studie mit 45 vier- bis sechsjährigen Kindern russischsprachiger Migranten aus Berlin vorgestellt. Es wurden drei Gruppen verglichen, welche sich einzig durch die Menge des zu Hause gesprochenen Deutschs unterschieden. Die statistische Auswertung ergab keinen Unterschied zwischen den Gruppen in den Fähigkeiten der deutschen Sprache, jedoch signifikante Unterschiede in der russischen Sprache. Demnach kann kein förderlicher Einfluss der Verwendung des Deutschen durch Eltern mit Migrationshintergrund auf die Entwicklung dieser Sprache bei ihren Kindern nachgewiesen werden. Ihre Sprachentwicklung in der Herkunftssprache Russisch ist jedoch maßgeblich vom Sprachangebot der Eltern abhängig. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Ergebnisse und mit dem Wissen, dass für die Eltern-Kind-Beziehung die Beherrschung der Muttersprache der Eltern sehr wichtig ist, kann man den Gebrauch der Muttersprache durch die Eltern nur unterstützen." (Autorenreferat)"The present contribution explores the impact of parental input on lexical and grammatical skills in the German and Russian language of bilingual immigrant children in Berlin. Additionally, it addresses the debates on the choice of language for communication between parents and children with a migration background and the optimal support for language development. The study examines the data of 45 Russian-speaking immigrant children aged four to six which were grouped according to the amount of German spoken at home. The results show no significant support in the development of the German language in children if parents speak the nonnative language with them, whereas competence in Russian noticeably diminishes since the development of this language is crucially dependent on the linguistic input of parents. Considering the importance of communication and social contact between parents and their children and the role of language in this tandem, the study provides evidence in favour of the use of the mother tongue by parents at home." (author's abstract

How oral texts are organized in monolingual and heritage Russian

Peer reviewe

Turkish-German heritage speakers' predictive use of case: webcam-based vs. in-lab eye-tracking

Recently, Özge et al. have argued that Turkish and German monolingual 4-year-old children can interpret case-marking predictively disregarding word order. Heritage speakers (HSs) acquire a heritage language at home and a majority societal language which usually becomes dominant after school enrollment. Our study directly compares two elicitation modes: in-lab and (remote) webcam-based eye-tracking data collection. We test the extent to which in-lab effects can be replicated in webcam-based eye-tracking using the exact same design. Previous research indicates that Turkish HSs vary more in the comprehension and production of case-marking compared to monolinguals. Data from 49 participants–22 Turkish monolinguals and 27 HSs–were analyzed using a binomial generalized linear mixed-effects regression model. In the Accusative condition, participants looked for the suitable Agent before it is appeared in speech. In the Nominative condition, participants looked for the suitable Patient before it is appeared in speech. HSs were able to use morphosyntactic cues on NP1 to predict the thematic role of NP2. This study supports views in which core grammatical features of languages, such as case, remain robust in HSs, in line with the Interface Hypothesis. We were able to replicate the effect of the predictive use of case in monolinguals using webcam-based eye-tracking, but the replication with heritage speakers was not successful due to variability in data collection contexts. A by-participant analysis of the results revealed individual variation in that there were some speakers who do not use case-marking predictively in the same way as most monolinguals and most HSs do. These findings suggest that the predictive use of case in heritage speakers is influenced by different factors, which may differ across individuals and affect their language abilities. We argue that HSs should be placed on a native-speaker continuum to explain variability in language outcomes.Peer Reviewe

Порядок слов в эритажном русском: влияние типа клаузы и языка окружения

Heritage speakers (HSs) are known to differ from monolingual speakers in various linguistic domains. The present study focuses on the syntactic properties of monolingual and heritage Russian. Using a corpus of semi-spontaneous spoken and written narratives produced by HSs of Russian residing in the US and Germany, we investigate HSs’ word order patterns and compare them to monolingual speakers of Russian from Saint Petersburg. Our results show that the majority language (ML) of HSs as well as the clause type contribute to observed differences in word order patterns between speaker groups. Specifically, HSs in Germany performed similarly to monolingual speakers of Russian while HSs in the US generally produced more SVO and less OVS orders than the speakers of the latter group. Furthermore, HSs in the US produced more SVO orders than both monolingual speakers and HSs in Germany in embedded clauses, but not in main clauses. The results of the study are discussed with the reference to the differences between main and embedded clauses as well as the differences between the MLs of the HSs.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (1034)Peer Reviewe

On the Typology of Inflection Class Systems

Inflectional classes are a property of the ideal inflecting-fusional language type. Thus strongly inflecting languages have the most complex vertical and horizontal stratification of hierarchical tree structures. Weakly inflecting languages which also approach the ideal isolating type or languages which also approach the agglutinating type have much shallower structures. Such properties follow from principles of Natural Morphology and from the distinction of the descendent hierarchy of macroclasses, classes, subclasses, subsubclasses etc. and homogeneous microclasses. The main languages of illustration are Latin, Lithuanian, Russian, German, French, Finnish, Hungarian and Turkis

Der Erwerb des Deutschen bei türkisch-deutsch und russisch-deutsch bilingualen Kindern: Gibt es doch einen Einfluss von Sprachfördermaßnahmen?

Die vorliegende Langzeitstudie untersucht den Einfluss von Sprachfördermaßnahmen auf die Entwicklung des Lexikons und der Grammatik bei 160 türkisch-deutsch und russisch-deutsch bilingualen Kindern im Alter von zwei bis sechs Jahren. Zwei Sprachförderprogramme - eine additive, kinderzentrierte und eine alltagsintegrierte, erzieherzentrierte Maßnahme - wurden über einen Zeitraum von drei Jahren durchgeführt. Die produktiven und rezeptiven grammatischen und lexikalischen Fähigkeiten der Kinder wurden in dieser Zeit erhoben und mit einer Kontrollgruppe ohne Sprachfördermaßnahmen verglichen. Einen signifikanten positiven Einfluss auf das Lexikon erbrachte lediglich die kinderzentrierte Maßnahme. Die anderen beiden Gruppen unterschieden sich nicht signifikant voneinander.The present longitudinal study examines the influence of preschool language support programs on the development of grammar and lexicon of 160 Turkish-German or Russian-German bilingual children aged two to six years. Two language support programs were implemented over the course of three years - one supplementary, child-centered program and one integrated, teacher-centered program. The children’s grammar and lexicon development in the intervention groups were compared with grammar and lexicon development in a control group without additional support. Only the child-centered support program significantly affected lexicon development. The other two groups did not differ significantly