1. For more information, please write to: armonls@mail.biu.ac.il * This research was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 4806) Poster Design by Makushner@gmail.com Inflectional Verb Errors in the Acquisition of Russian by Bilingual and Monolingual Children Sharon Armon -Lotem, Bar Ilan University, Natalia Gagarina, ZAS, Berlin, Olga Gupol, Bar Ilan University, Israel Language Acquisition and Bilingualism: Consequences for a Multilingual Society Toronto, May 4-7, 2006 Russian Verbal System Three tenses and two aspects Perfective (Pf)Imperfective (Ipf) Past++ Present-+ Future+(analytical – to be +inf ) NumberSG, PL GenderMasc, Fem, Neut Person1 st, 2 nd, and 3 rd About 50 inflectional microclasses (i.e. the smallest subset of an inflectional class above the paradigm, definable as the set of paradigms which share exactly the same morpholog­i­cal generalizations, but may differ via the application of phonological processes (Dressler and Gagarina 1999) The 1st productive microclass: two stems/bases: igra-t’ (OB-inf) – igraj-u (CB-1s) play Hebrew verbal system Five derivational conjugations (binyanim) 4 root-based types that consist of 24 subclasses 3 tenses: past, present, future Present tense: agreement in gender and number Past & Future tenses: agreement in person, gender and number No morphological manifestation of aspect Contrastive analysis Typologically different stem vs. root system Different gender system: No neutral gender in Hebrew Different inflections in present/future tense Different inflections in past tense Different tense categorization Presence/absence of aspect  Research Objectives To compare the erroneous use of verbal inflections in the early verb development of Russian, in Russian monolinguals and Russian-Hebrew sequential bilinguals.  Research Questions 1. What are the types of erroneous use of verb inflection? 2. Is there a relation of erroneous use to the general development of verb grammar in children measured in:  MLU  ratio of verb utterances over all utterances (VU%)  the productivity of verb inflection 3. Do bilingual errors change over time? 4. Are the errors in the bilingual production evidence for second language influence on the acquisition process of the first language?  Predictions 1. We expect to see the common monolingual errors in both groups as well as unique bilingual difficulties. 2. Bilingual verb development will show delay with respect to the norms of linguistic monolingual behaviour. 3. Second language influence on the acquisition process of the first language will manifest itself in contrastive structures. 4. Common monolingual errors will reduce over time, while unique bilingual difficulties will increase. Monolingual verb production Onset of verb production: error rate of 16-27% Onset of inflectional productivity: strong reduction of errors (under 9%) By the age of 2;10: further reduction of errors (ca. 2-3%) Bilingual verb production in Russian Error rate of all children is higher (14%-45%), even when: MLU matches monolinguals at 2;10 VU% is higher than monolinguals at 2;10 exposure to Hebrew less than a year Error rate increases over time General verb production  Findings Distribution of errors Aspectual errors Gender in the past is the major source of errors Person in the present errors occur only during the onset of productivity Number errors are marginal Monolinguals Agreement errors  Method – monolinguals Three L1 Russian-speaking children Vanja (V.), Vitja (Vi.), Liza (L.) The mean length of recordings per month 2.5 hours V.1;5 – 4;5...[analyzed utterances ~32000] Vi.2;0 – 2;10...[analyzed utterances ~4500] L.1;2 – 3;0[analyzed utterances ~5000] Excluded: frozen forms, immediate repetitions, (self-repetitions), citations, yes- no sentences, exclamations... Monolingual acquisition of Russian Productive use of verb inflection three/four months after the onset of verb production (cf., Kiebzak-Mandera et al. 1997, Poupynin 1998, Gagarina 2003, etc.) Ratio of the verb utterances (VU) over all utterances becomes near-target number of the VU (comparing children’s output and input) five to seven months after the emergence of verbs MLU reflects these developmental changes  Subjects & Data - Monolingual 10 46 140 10 52 120 16 99 120 Verb lemmas 11,1 22,5 41, 4 10,0 30,7 47,3 4,6 32,1 36,0 VU (%) 1.017 1.199 3. 054 1;8 1;11 2; 10 L. 1.764 1.974 3.400 2;1 2;34 2;10 Vi. 1.332 2.153 2.758 2;1 2;3 2;10 V. MLU Age onset of the V prod. onset/development of productivity target - like use Child  Method – bilinguals Eight L1 Russian-L2 Hebrew bilingual children Second recording of two of the L1 Russian-L2 Hebrew bilingual children nine months later The mean length of recordings 45 min Total analyzed utterances in both phases: 2,947 Excluded: frozen forms, immediate repetitions, (self-repetitions), citations, yes-no sentences, exclamations... Comparability of data For the general comparison of linguistic development, we computed MLU: one is comparable to onset of verb production two are comparable to onset of productivity five of the bilingual children can be compared to the monolingual children at age 2;10 In the second samples, the early bilingual is comparable to onset of productivity, and the late bilingual can still be compared to the monolingual children at age 2;10 In order to establish a comparable level of the morphological development we computed the VU%: seven of the bilinguals are comparable to 2;10 and older. This also holds for the later samples. only one child, who is a simultaneous bilingual, is comparable with the onset of verb production Categories of analysis The number and percentage of verbal utterances of all utterances (VU%) morphological errors (for these utterances) The erroneous uses of the verbs 1.Use of the wrong form in the context: Root infinitives Contextually infelicitous tense Luck of subject-verb agreement in person, number and gender 2.Wrong use of aspect 3.Use of the wrong pattern for the stem shift Four kinds of errors were found to be typical for both groups of children: 1.The production of infinitives instead of finite forms 2.Wrong person in present tense 3.Wrong gender in past tense 4.Stem errors These errors are more typical of younger monolinguals. They are evident in the bilingual group after the age of 3;6. Error types 1-3 reduce over time. Two kinds of errors are unique to the bilingual group, and increase over time: 1.Wrong aspect (Imperfective for Perfective) 2.Wrong tense Errors found in both populations may indicate a delay (for the early bilinguals) and attrition (for the late bilinguals) Errors which are unique for bilinguals may suggest L2 influence. The disappearance of the monolingual errors over time supports an analysis in terms of L2 influence. Errors found in both populations may indicate a delay (for the early bilinguals) and attrition (for the late bilinguals) Errors which are unique for bilinguals may suggest L2 influence. The disappearance of the monolingual errors over time supports an analysis in terms of L2 influence.  Conclusions  Summary of Errors