For more information, please write to: armonls@mail.biu.ac.il

* This research was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 4806)

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19

Bilingual subjects – sample I IChild

Age

Length of exposure to L2

MLU For the whole data

Verb Utterances

VU%

Eldar I 4 3 3.4 167 57

Eldar II

4;9

3;9

2.01 193 79

Leya I 4;3 9 months 4.8 244 72 Leya II 5 1;6 5.9 210 87

•Eldar is an early bi lingual and Leya is a late bilingual

•There is a decrease in Eldar’s MLU from time I to time I I , but an increase in the percentage of his verbal utterances out of all utterances (VU% )

•There is an increase in Le ya’s MLU and VU%.

18

Bilingual subjects and data

•All but Galit are sequential bilinguals. Eldar, Lital and Michael are early BL.

•All children use Russian with Parents and Hebrew with siblings and peers

•All children are older than 3, at time of recording, when the basic of the morphology of the target language is ‘normally’ established

Patricia 5 9 months 2 140 48.6

Leya 4,3 9 months 4,8 244 72

Tali 4 9 months 1,3 113 70

Zhenya 3,6 9 months 3,1 176 59

Michael 3,6 1,11 3.1 159 50

Lital 3,9 2 2.9 132 32

Eldar 4 3 3.4 167 57

Galit 3,5 3,5 1.8 35 10

Child Age Length of exposure to L2

MLU Verb Utterances

VU%

Inflectional Verb Errors in the Acquisition of Russianby 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

8

PastPresent (Ipf) / Future (Pf)

igraj-et

igraj-eš

igraj-u

SG

igra-l-i

igra-l-oNeut.igraj-ut3

igra-lMasc.igraj-ete2

igra-l-aFem.igraj-em1

PLSGPL

igrat’ – Ipf s’’igrat’ –Pf to play

Inflectional classes: OB (inf) – CB (pres.1s)

productive: igra-t’ – igraj-u playunproductive: pisa-t’ – piš-u write

plaka-t – plač-u crysypa-t – sypl -u poor

Russian Verbal System

• Three tenses and two aspects Perfective (Pf) Imperfective (Ipf)

Past + +Present - +Future + (analytical – to be +inf)

• Number SG, PL • Gender Masc, Fem, Neut• Person 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

• 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 morpholog i cal 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.

2 4

B i l i n g u a l s I IC h i l d

A g e

V t o k e n s

V e r r o r s ( T o k e n s )

V e r r o r s % W i t h r e s p e c t t o t h e c o r r e c t v e r b a l u s e s

E l d a r I 4 2 3 7 8 2 3 4 . 6

E l d a r I I

4 , 9

2 1 9

9 8 4 4 . 7

L e y a I 4 , 3 3 6 5 1 0 6 2 9

L e y a I I 5 , 0 3 3 5 1 1 1 3 3 . 1

23

Bilinguals

Patricia 5 162 43 26,5

Leya 4,3 365 106 29

Tali 4 120 54 45

Zhenya 3,6 244 41 16,8

Michael 3,6 194 27 13,9

Lital 3,9 180 28 15,6

Eldar 4 237 82 34,6

Galit 3,5 35 3 8,6

Child Age V tokens V errors (Tokens)

V errors %With respect to the correct verbal uses

22

Monolinguals

23,18,73,3

3612

1369361

1;81;112;10

L.

27,37,01,7

99 5

33129299

2;12;32;10

Vi.

16,11,52,9

979

56460309

2;12;32;10

V.

V. errors: Tokens %

V. errors: Tokens V. TokensAgeChild

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

28

Bilinguals

•Root Infinitives (RIs) are found, but are not the major source of errors

•Tense and aspect errors form a prominent share of the errors. Tense errors are unique to the bilingual children

•The error pattern is clearly different from that of the monolinguals

Patric

iaLe

yaTali

Zhen

ya

Mich

ael

Lita

l

Eldar

Galit

Tense

RI

Agreement

Aspect

Stem errors

Distribution of errors

27

•At verb onset, the majority of errors are Root Infinitives (RIs).

•When morphology becomes productive, agreement errors become morefrequent.

•When adultlike VU% is found, RI disappear while stem errors gradually become the main source of errors.

Liza

Adult VU%ProductivityVerb onset: L.

Tense

RI

Agreement

Aspect

Stem errors

Vitja

Adult VU%ProductivityVerb onset: L.

29

Bilinguals I I

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

June March June March

Eldar Eldar Leya Leya

Tense

RI

Agreement

Aspect

Stem mistakes

•Root Infinitives (RIs) are found, but their share is smaller

•Tense and aspect errors form over 70% of the errors.

•The error pattern is clearly different from that of the monolinguals

3 7

B i l i n g u a l s I IC h i l d P f f o r i p f I p f f o r p f E l d a r I 8 1 0 E l d a r I I 1 9 2 7 L e y a I 3 1 0 L e y a I I 5 2 0

B i l i n g u a l e r r o r s c o n t i n u e t o b e i n b o t h d i r e c t i o n s , w i t h m o r e i m p e r f e c t i v e f o r p e r f e c t i v e

36

BilingualsChild Pf for Ipf Ipf for Pf Galit 0 1 Eldar 8 10 Lital 5 9 Michael 3 2 Zhenya 1 10 Tali 1 7 Leya 3 10 Patricia 1 9 Total 22 58

•Monolingual children use perfective (Pf) for imperfective (Ipf) in the analytical constructions

•Bilingual children: errors in both directions, with more imperfective (Ipf) for perfective (Pf)

Aspectual errors

33

34

Bilinguals

Past-Gender

Past-Number

Present-Person

Present- Number

•Gender in the past is the greatest source of errors

•Person in the Present is a source of errors only for the early BL

•Number errors are evident for all children

Vitja

Adult VU%ProductivityVerb onset

Past-Gender

Past-Number

Present-Person

Present- Number

Liza

Adult VU%ProductivityVerb onset

Past-Gender

Past-Number

Present-Person

Present- Number

•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

35

Bilinguals II

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

June March June March

Eldar Eldar Leya Leya

Past-Gender

Past-Number

Present -Person

Present-Number

•Gender in the past is still the greatest source of errors

•Person in the Present is a source of errors only for the early BL

•Number errors are evident for both children

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

1046140

1052120

1699120

Verblemmas

11,122,541,4

10,030,747,3

4,632,136,0

VU )%(

1.0171.1993.054

1;81;112;10

L.

1.7641.9743.400

2;12;342;10

Vi.

1.3322.1532.758

2;12;32;10

V.

MLUAge• 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 dataFor 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