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Aspect and Case in Interlanguage Grammars: the Case of English Learners of Russian

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Aspect and Case in Interlanguage Grammars: the Case of English Learners of Russian ASPECT AND CASE IN INTERLANGUAGE GRAMMARS: THE CASE OF ENGLISH LEARNERS OF RUSSIAN IRYNA LENCHUK A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN LINGUISTICS AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO JANUARY 2016 © IRYNA LENCHUK, 2016 ABSTRACT This dissertation presents the results of an empirical study that investigates the acquisition of aspect and case by English speaking adult second language learners (L2) of Russian. Richardson (2007) argues that in Russian, structural Accusative case is aspectually relevant and that it is linked to the compositional event structure of the base form of a verb. The base form of a verb is compositionally determined when addition of a lexical or telic prefix changes the grammatical aspect of a verb from imperfective to perfective and lexical aspect from atelic to telic. I refer to these verbs as Condition 1 verbs. Alternatively, the base form of a verb is not compositionally determined when it merges with a superlexical prefix that changes the grammatical aspect of a verb from imperfective to perfective but does not change the telicity of an inherently atelic verb. I refer to these verbs as Condition 2 verbs. Direct objects of Condition 1 verbs are marked with structural Accusative case, whereas direct objects of inherently atelic Condition 2 verbs are assigned lexical case. The question that is investigated in the study is whether the knowledge of Condition 1 and Condition 2 verbs is part of the interlanguage (IL) grammars of L2 learners of Russian. Specifically, whether L2 English learners understand that in Russian, perfectivity is not always equated with telicity, and a base form of verbs whose event structure is (not) compositionally determined has different case assigning mechanisms. Six native speakers of Russian and 29 L1-English L2 learners of Russian performed the following experimental tasks: a Logical Entailment task, a Grammaticality Judgement task, and an Elicited Production task. Each task included sentences with Condition 1 and Condition 2 verbs. A repeated measures ANOVA, where Condition 1 verbs or Condition 2 verbs were used as a within subject factor and the proficiency group as a between subject factor, showed a ii significant effect for Condition 1 or Condition 2 verbs with the participants performing better on Condition 1 verbs across the three tasks. The superior performance on Condition 1 verbs is explained by the accessibility of the universal semantic feature [telic], the less marked cluster of features [+telic, +perfective] and the availability of structural Accusative case in English. A decline in performance on Condition 2 verbs is explained by the difficulties in acquiring a more marked cluster of features [-telic, +perfective], and the idiosyncrasy of lexical case. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge many people who helped me in writing this dissertation. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Gabriela Alboiu, for her guidance and supervision of my academic work. Her insightful comments and suggestions have tremendously helped me make this dissertation more focussed and clearly written. I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Peter Avery for sharing with me his knowledge in the area of second language research and for providing insightful comments on earlier drafts of this dissertation. I am grateful to Dr. Kiyoko Toratani for providing very important comments that strengthen the discussion part of this dissertation. I also want to thank Dr. Hugh McCague and Mirka Ondrack from the Institute for Social Research, York University, for helping me understand the process of statistical analysis. I especially want to thank Mirka Ondrack. Her advice was enormously helpful in choosing and applying the right statistical procedure used in this study. This dissertation will not be possible without the participants who took part in the study. All of them were of tremendous help! I particularly want to acknowledge Victoria Stepanova and the staff of Novamova, a language school in Kiev, Ukraine, Casey Craven and Dr. Thomas R. Beyer. I also want to thank Tatiana Smorodinska, Middlebury College, and Julia Mikhailova, University of Toronto, for assisting me in recruiting the participants for the empirical study. Finally, I would like to thank the Faculty of Graduate Studies, York University, for offering me the research funding, which was used to recruit participants and administer the tests. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgment .......................................................................................................................... iv Table of contents ..............................................................................................................................v List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................x Abbreviations used in glosses ........................................................................................................ xi Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Theoretical background: Minimalism, aspect and case ...............................................10 2.1 Minimalism ..........................................................................................................................10 2.2 Aspect ...................................................................................................................................14 2.2.1 Lexical and grammatical aspect: An overview with a focus on Russian and English ...14 2.2.2 The compositionality of telicity: An example from English .........................................21 2.2.3 The compositionality of telicity: An example from Russian .........................................26 2.2.4 The relationship between telicity and perfectivity in Russian .......................................27 2.2.4.1 Tests for telicity .....................................................................................................28 2.2.4.2 Perfectivity is not always telicity in Russian .........................................................31 2.2.4.3 Types of Russian verbal prefixes and their properties ...........................................33 2.3 Case ..........................................................................................................................................38 2.3.1 Abstract case in generative grammar .............................................................................39 2.3.2 Structural versus non-structural case ............................................................................42 2.3.3 Morphological case ........................................................................................................44 2.3.4 Case in Russian ..............................................................................................................45 2.4 The link between aspect and case ........................................................................................51 2.4.1 The link between structural case and telicity in English and German: Kratzer (2004). 52 2.4.1 The link between case and aspect in Russian ................................................................56 2.5 Richardson‟s (2007) proposal .............................................................................................60 2.5.1 Richardson‟s (2007) proposal for case checking/assigning mechanisms ......................63 2.5.2 Possible counterexamples ..............................................................................................69 2.5.3 The main generalization: Two examples .......................................................................72 2.6 Chapter summary .................................................................................................................75 Chapter 3: An overview of the generative literature on the acquisition of aspect and case in L2 Russian ..........................................................................................................................................76 3.1 Major theoretical assumptions: Accessibility of UG in L2 acquisition ...............................77 3.1.1 Major theoretical assumptions: Three hypotheses to account for the variability of IL grammars .......................................................................................................................79 3.1.2 Major theoretical assumptions: The directionality of learning .....................................85 3.2 An overview of two studies on the acquisition of aspect by L2 learners of Russian ...........86 3.2.1 Slabakova (2005): Acquisition of telicity by English speaking L2 learners of Russian ....................................................................................................................................88 v 3.2.2 Nossalik (2009): Acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect by L2 learners of Russian ..........................................................................................................................91
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