The Acquisition of Russian Aspect by Sabine Erika Stoll Grad. (University of Munich) 1993 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Slavic Languages and Literatures in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Committee in charge: Professor Alan Timberlake, Chair Professor Johanna Nichols Professor Dan I. Slobin Fall 2001 Meinen Eltern in Liebe und Dankbarkeit Table of Contents Abstract...............................................................................................................vii Acknowledgments................................................................................................ix Introduction...........................................................................................................1 1. Theoretical background.............................................................................2 1.1 The two major approaches to acquisition............................................2 1.2 Criteria for acquisition.......................................................................4 1.3 Context..............................................................................................6 1.4 Data used in acquisition studies..........................................................7 1.5 The acquisition of aspect..................................................................10 1.6 Previous research on the acquisition of Russian aspect.....................10 2. Questions and goals of this dissertation....................................................14 3. Major hypotheses.....................................................................................14 4. Methods...................................................................................................15 5. Data analysis...........................................................................................17 6. Results of this dissertation.......................................................................20 7. Structure of the dissertation.....................................................................21 Part I: Russian aspect Chapter 1: The Semantics of Russian aspect........................................................27 1. Introduction.............................................................................................27 2. The structuralist approach: Russian aspect as a binary category...............29 2.1 'Totality' as the invariant feature.......................................................31 2.2 'Boundaries' or boundedness as the invariant feature........................32 2.3 Status of the features [+/± totality] and [+/± boundary]....................34 3. Semantic definition of the perfective aspect used in this study.................37 4. The approach of this dissertation: a neo-structuralist approach.................38 Chapter 2: Aktionsarten.......................................................................................41 1. Introduction.............................................................................................41 2. Aktionsarten in Russian...........................................................................45 2.1 The telic Aktionsart..........................................................................49 2.2 The ingressive Aktionsart.................................................................49 2.2.1 Synthetic ingressives................................................................49 2.2.2 Analytic ingressives.................................................................51 3. Systemic and communicative status of Russian Aktionsarten...................54 iv Chapter 3: The Morphology of Russian Aspect...................................................57 1. Introduction.............................................................................................57 2. Russian aspect: inflectional or derivational?............................................58 3. Morphological markers of Russian aspect................................................61 4. Tense and aspect combinations................................................................64 5. The role of verbal pairs in Russian aspect................................................66 5.1 Theoretical status of aspectual pairs.................................................66 5.2 The empirical status of pairs in language use....................................72 Chapter 4: The Pragmatics of Russian Aspect.....................................................75 1. Introduction.............................................................................................75 2. Aspectual functions.................................................................................77 2.1 Perfective aspect..............................................................................77 2.2 Imperfective aspect..........................................................................82 2.2.1 The durative function...............................................................82 2.2.2 The statement-of-fact-function.................................................83 3. The role of aspect in discourse structure..................................................87 3.1 Sequentiality and foregrounding......................................................89 3.2 Importance and foregrounding.........................................................94 4. The transitivity hierarchy.........................................................................95 Chapter 5: An Integrative Approach to Russian Aspect.......................................99 1. Introduction.............................................................................................99 2. Inherent markedness..............................................................................103 2.1 Morphological markedness............................................................103 2.2 Semantic markedness.....................................................................108 2.2.1 General semantic markedness.................................................109 2.2.2 Aktionsart specific semantic markedness................................109 3. Contextual markedness..........................................................................110 4. The role of markedness in language acquisition.....................................117 Part II: The acquisition of Russian aspect Chapter 6: Comprehension of Isolated Utterances (Level 1)..............................123 1. Introduction...........................................................................................123 2. Hypotheses............................................................................................125 3. Design of the experiment and procedure................................................127 4. Results...................................................................................................132 5. Conclusions...........................................................................................141 Chapter 7: Description of Isolated Events (Level 1)...........................................147 1. Introduction...........................................................................................147 2. Design of the experiment and procedure................................................150 v 3. Qualitative differences between Level 1 comprehension and production data......................................................................................154 4. Hypotheses............................................................................................157 5. Results and Discussion..........................................................................159 5.1 Distribution of Aktionsarten over age.............................................159 5.2 Distribution of aspect across age....................................................164 5.2.1 General distribution of aspect.................................................164 5.2.2 Distribution of aspect within the telic Aktionsart....................166 6. Conclusions...........................................................................................170 Chapter 8: The Description of Short Events (Level 2).......................................173 1. Introduction...........................................................................................173 2. Design of the experiment and procedure................................................174 3. Hypotheses............................................................................................177 4. Results and Discussion..........................................................................179 4.1 Version 1.......................................................................................179 4.1.1 Distribution of Aktionsarten over age.....................................179 4.1.2 Distribution of aspect over age...............................................182 4.1.2.1 General distribution of aspect.............................................182 4.1.2.2 Distribution of aspect within the telic Aktionsart................184 4.1.3 The distribution of tense within the durative Aktionsart..........186 4.1.4 Types of telic imperfectives used............................................187 4.2 Version 2.......................................................................................189 4.2.1 Distribution of Aktionsarten over age.....................................191 4.2.2 Distribution of aspect over age...............................................192 4.2.2.1 General distribution of aspect.............................................192 4.2.2.2 Distribution of aspect within the telic Aktionsart................195 4.3 On the variation within and across age groups................................196 5. Conclusions...........................................................................................199 Chapter 9: Complex Narratives (Level 3)..........................................................203 1. Introduction...........................................................................................203 2. Design of the experiment and procedure................................................205 3. Hypotheses............................................................................................207 4. Results and Discussion..........................................................................209 4.1 Distribution of Aktionsarten over age.............................................209 4.2 Distribution of aspect over age.......................................................220 4.2.1 General distribution of aspect.................................................220 4.2.2 Distribution of aspect within the telic Aktionsart....................225 4.3 The role of anchor tense in narratives.............................................229 4.3.1 The anchor tense strategy.......................................................230 4.3.2 Preferred tense within the anchor tense strategy......................236 4.3.3 Mixed tense strategy...............................................................237 4.3.4 Anchor tense and its correlation with story-telling..................238 5. Conclusions...........................................................................................239 vi Chapter 10: Two Complementary Aktionsarten: Ingressives vs. Telics..............243 1. Introduction...........................................................................................243 2. Ingressives and telics in the comprehension experiment (Level 1)..........245 3. Hypotheses............................................................................................247 4. Telics and Ingressives in production: narratives (Level 3)......................249 4.1 Synthetic ingressives......................................................................250 4.2 Analytic ingressives.......................................................................253 5. Telics and Ingressives in Production: isolated events (Level 1).............256 6. Conclusions...........................................................................................260 Chapter 11: Conclusions..................................................................................265 1. Findings and explanations......................................................................265 2. Relevance of this study for theories of language acquisition ..................271 Appendix..........................................................................................................275 References........................................................................................................277 Abstract The central goal of this dissertation is to introduce and provide evidence for the Hypothesis of Context-Driven Learning, which states that linguistic forms and functions are first acquired in highly specific contexts before their usage becomes generalized. Support for this hypothesis comes from one comprehension and three production experiments with children aged 2 – 6. The experiments vary with regard to the complexity of the discourse context in which aspectual forms are embedded. Their analysis leads to four major conclusions. First, Russian aspect is not an innate category or a category that is readily available from the beginning of language acquisition. The acquisition of this category, with its complex morphology, semantics and pragmatics, is a long process that is not completed even by age 6. Second, aspect acquisition is directly influenced by a multitude of factors: Aktionsarten (lexical temporal specifications of verbs), morphology, discourse complexity, and narrative competence. For example, the developmental pattern is different for telic and ingressive Aktionsarten, for synthetic and analytic morphology, for isolated and concatenated utterances; and the development of aspect competence is tied to the development of narrative competence. Third, the distribution of aspectual forms within each level of discourse complexity is approximately the same across age groups, but differs widely across these discourse levels. Thus, children are sensitive to adult-like contextual frequency distributions from early on. However, younger children do not yet master the full range of canonical functions of these forms. For example, the backgrounding function of the imperfective emerges relatively late, i.e., only when children’s narrative competence has developed sufficiently. Fourth, there is a stage in which children use aspect in a context-dependent way, without making generalizations across contexts. In some contexts their form/function viii mapping corresponds to that of the target language, while in other contexts it does not. Together, these four results suggest that there are three stages involved in the acquisition of Russian aspect, and perhaps in acquisition in general. Stage 1 is tied to individual verb meanings, here Aktionsarten. Stage 2 is characterized by context- driven learning. In Stage 3, the target stage, usage is no longer tied to specific contexts. Acknowledgments This dissertation has a long and complicated history. The research was supported by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, the Departement of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Berkeley, and three Summer Humanities Grants. This support is gratefully acknowledged. There are many people who helped me on the way, and I want to express my deepest gratitude to all of them. In 1994, I was awarded a Ph.D. fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguisitics in Nijmegen. The ideas of the project originated in the stimulating environment of the Max Planck Institute. I especially want to thank Steve Levinson who was very supportive. I was then invited by Dan Slobin, who was my advisor at the Max Planck Institute, to spend time as a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Dan introduced me to Alan Timberlake and Johanna Nichols. I had many interesting and fruitful discussions with Alan and Dan, and they influenced my thinking about aspect and language acquisition immensely. This time in Berkeley changed my plans completely, because I decided not to go back and get a Ph.D. in Europe, but instead to apply to Berkeley and go through the Ph.D. program after my fieldwork in Russia. In Berkeley, I designed my experiments and did the filming for two experiments. Back at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen Gerd Klaasen helped me to cut my film material. Then I spent an exiting year in the kindergartens and homes of children in St. Petersburg. There were many people involved in this work and I am much indebted to all of them: Natalija Guseva assisted in the administration of the experiments; she was wonderful in the interaction with the children and provided important help in conducting the experiments. Tatjana Krugljakova transcribed the data; she did a wonderful job in all those years working in this project, which had become much bigger than I had anticipated. Thanks, Tanja, without your help this project would have been indeed impossible! Galina Dobrova provided essential logistic help in St. x Petersburg and made life much nicer and easier. She also introduced me to all the kindergartens where I conducted the experiments. Nelli and Jurij Petro«cenkov made my stay in St. Petersburg very pleasant and became great friends. Without them, I would never remember this time as nice as it was. I also want to thank the kinder- gartens and most importantly, the children who participated with such enthusiasm in the experiments. It was really a lot of fun to work with them. I came back to Berkeley in 1996 to start the Ph.D. program, and so my research had to rest till the course work was finished. Alan Timberlake, Dan Slobin and Johanna Nichols influenced my thinking immensely, and they were involved in all stages of my research, I am very much indebted to all of them. U.C. Berkeley provided ideal academic conditions and Alan, Johanna and Dan were a great inspiration through all the time I have been in Berkeley. Actually, Alan’s and Johanna’s teaching nearly made me change my dissertation topic. I got so exhited about Historical Linguistics that I wanted to work on Historical Linguistics exclusively. However, my fascination with language acquisition was stronger in the end. For discussions and comments on all versions of this dissertation I want to thank Alan, Johanna and Dan. Especially Johanna took a great effort to go very thoroughly through the last versions of this dissertation and her comments improved the manuscript considerably. Further, I am indebted to Daniel Diermeier and Daniel Stahl for statistical advice, and Harald Schröpfer for help when filming the stimuli. The last version of this dissertation was written at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. My thanks go to Mike Tomasello for inviting me and to all my new colleagues for providing a stimulating environment for this last and important phase. I am most indebted Balthasar Bickel who provided inspiration, support, interes- ting discussions and challenge all along. His comments on all stages of this disserta- tion were invaluable. Without him, this dissertation would probably never have been written.