The role of Aktionsart in the acquisition of Russian aspect

Abstract

In contrast to what is often assumed in universalist approaches to language acquisition, this paper demonstrates that the acquisition of aspect in at least one language, namely in Russian, is not based on an innate primitive category. The results of a comprehension experiment run with Russian preschool children (age 2-6 years) show that Russian aspect is not acquired in a single step, but rather develops as a slow process. This development is further shown to depend on differences in the intrinsic temporal semantics ('Aktionsart') of the verb. Morphological properties of the verb, by contrast, do not seem to play a significant role in the acquisition process. Thus, aspect acquisition relies on an increasing competence in lexical differentiation of Aktionsarten rather than on a direct linking of conceptual primitives with * stimulating discussions, comments and support at various stages of this project. I would also like to thank Johanna Nichols, Elena Lieven and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Daniel Diermeier gave me useful advice for the statistics. A prelimmary version of this paper was presented in July 1996 at the VIIth International Congress for the Study of Child Language in Istanbul, and I thank the audience for the discussion. It goes without saying that I am alone responsible for any remaining mistakes. Harald Schr6pfer and Damel Diermeier helped me with the filming of the experiment and Gerd Klaasen taught me the split screen technique. I am highly indebted to all of them. Furthermore, I am indebted to Natasa Guseva who assisted me in the experiments. I also would like to thank the kindergartens Nr. 13 and 21 in St Petersburg for their extremely valuable support. Galina R. Dobrova provided essential logistic help in St Petersburg without which the research would not have been possible. Downloaded from 352 morphological markers. A very early and prominent role is played by verbs with telic Aktionsart. In line with what has been shown for the acquisition of tense in several languages, the telic Aktionsart might have a bootstrapping effect in the acquisition of aspect, too.

Reaching the end point and stopping midway: different scenarios in the acquisition of Russian

“…Aspect seems to differ from other grammatical categories in acquisition because Russian-speaking children rarely make mistakes in aspect, while making various grammatical mistakes in tense or agreement of the verb (Gvozdev 1961, 425). Stoll's (2001Stoll's ( , 2003Stoll's ( , 2005 work addresses the special status of aspectual distinctions by arguing for a lexically driven approach to aspect. Based on comprehension experiments involving preschool children (age 2-6 years), Stoll suggests that aspect is not acquired in a single step, but rather develops as a slow process, thus supporting the lexicalist approach.…”

Cognitive Linguistics: A Neat Theory for Messy Data

“…The acquisition of Russian aspect has been approached from the perspective of cognitive linguistics in a number of works by Stoll, beginning with her dissertation (Stoll 2001); however, here we focus on just one article about how children sort perfective verbs from imperfective verbs. Stoll and Gries (2009) looked at the distribution of perfective vs. imperfective verbs across past vs. non-past tense in the speech of child learners of Russian as compared to their adult caregivers.…”

Emergence of Aktionsarten: The First Step Towards Aspect

“…Perfective aspect expresses the action as a total event summed up with reference to a single juncture, and Imperfective is characterized by the absence of that notion (Forsyth, 1972). The juncture, or position of the event's boundary, is fundamental for the Aktionsart of the verb, but the notion of perfectivity does not discriminate between the different possible positions (Bickel, 1997;Stoll, 1998). For example, the ingressive Aktionsart expresses the notion of beginning of an event, as in the verb zagovorit (zagovorit', 'start-talking.PFV'), whereas the Perfective sums up this beginning as a single undividable whole presenting it as a total event.…”

“…The setup of the experiment is inspired by psychological studies of Stoll (1998), who investigated how Russian children develop their understanding of aspect. Toddlers were interviewed after watching pairs of short movies, each illustrating what would be described by a different aspectual form of the same verb stem.…”