The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

What is so difficult about telicity marking in L2 Russian?

What is so difficult about telicity marking in L2 Russian?
What is so difficult about telicity marking in L2 Russian?
Two major mechanisms of encoding telicity across languages are either marking the object as exhaustively countable or measurable, or utilizing a specific prefix on the verbal form. English predominantly uses the first mechanism, while Russian mostly utilizes the second. The learning task of an English speaker acquiring Russian, then, is two-fold: to learn each individual verb with its subset of perfective prefixes, and to acquire knowledge of the fact that most prefixed verbs denote telic events. Sixty-six English-speaking learners of Russian as well as 45 controls took an on-line test of semantic interpretation. Results indicate that some low intermediate learners, and the majority of high intermediate and advanced learners are highly accurate in interpreting Russian telicity marking. It is argued that the difficulty in acquiring Russian aspect lies in learning the lexical items signaling telicity, but crucially NOT in learning the grammatical mechanism for telicity marking.
1366-7289
63-77
Slabakova, Roumyana
1bda11ce-ce3d-4146-8ae3-4a486b6f5bde
Slabakova, Roumyana
1bda11ce-ce3d-4146-8ae3-4a486b6f5bde

Slabakova, Roumyana (2005) What is so difficult about telicity marking in L2 Russian? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 8 (1), 63-77. (doi:10.1017/S1366728904002093).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Two major mechanisms of encoding telicity across languages are either marking the object as exhaustively countable or measurable, or utilizing a specific prefix on the verbal form. English predominantly uses the first mechanism, while Russian mostly utilizes the second. The learning task of an English speaker acquiring Russian, then, is two-fold: to learn each individual verb with its subset of perfective prefixes, and to acquire knowledge of the fact that most prefixed verbs denote telic events. Sixty-six English-speaking learners of Russian as well as 45 controls took an on-line test of semantic interpretation. Results indicate that some low intermediate learners, and the majority of high intermediate and advanced learners are highly accurate in interpreting Russian telicity marking. It is argued that the difficulty in acquiring Russian aspect lies in learning the lexical items signaling telicity, but crucially NOT in learning the grammatical mechanism for telicity marking.

This record has no associated files available for download.

More information

Published date: April 2005
Organisations: Modern Languages

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 353563
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/353563
ISSN: 1366-7289
PURE UUID: e5a546fe-1c89-42ac-8932-e493ea132316
ORCID for Roumyana Slabakova: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-5839-460X

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 18 Jun 2013 12:08
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:48

Export record

Altmetrics

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×