Cover not available

Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 8:5 (2018) ► pp.637–663

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

The acquisition of the weaker language

Evidence from the acquisition of Russian cases by a Turkish-Russian child

 | Hacettepe University
 | University College London
Published online: 2 November 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.16029.ant
Abstract
This study contributes to the discussion about the status of the weaker language (WL) by investigating whether reduced input in Russian in a Turkish-dominant environment is sufficient for monolingual-like acquisition of the WL. We focus on the acquisition of Russian cases by a Turkish-Russian child who has acquired his Russian in the Turkish-dominant environment mainly through interaction with his multilingual mother. The data were collected via video/audio recordings, covering the period of between two years and eleven months and four years of the participant. First, the data were examined in terms of the availability of Russian cases and their functions. Then, we looked into whether the data were marked with deviations from monolingual norms in terms of error rates and patterns. The findings suggested that despite the reduced input, the acquisition of Russian cases by the Turkish-Russian participant follows the same pattern as monolingual acquisition does.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Role of input in bilingual acquisition
    • 2.1Input threshold
  • 3.Typological characteristics of Russian and Russian cases
    • 3.1The Russian case system
  • 4.Acquisition of Russian cases by monolingual children
  • 5.Acquisition of Russian cases by bilingual children
  • 6.Method
    • 6.1Participant
    • 6.2Data collection and transcription
    • 6.3Data analysis
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1Overall use of Russian cases in S.’s production
    • 7.2Functions of Russian cases in S.’s production
    • 7.3Error patterns in S.’s production
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (71)
References
Adshead, D. (1979). The Russian child’s acquisition of morphology. Journal of Russian Studies, 371, 21–24.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aronoff, M. (1994). Morphology by itself: Stems and inflectional classes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Babyonyshev, M. (1993). The acquisition of Russian case. In C. Philips (Ed.), Papers on case and agreement II: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 191, 1–44. Cambridge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Babyonyshev, M., Fein, R., Ganger, J., Avrutin, S., Pesetsky, D., & Wexler, K. (1994). Maturation of A-Chains: Preliminary new evidence from the acquisition of Russian unaccusatives. MIT working papers in Linguistics, 231, 1–20.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bar-Shalom, E., & Zaretsky, E. (2008). Selective attrition in Russian-English bilingual children: Preservation of grammatical aspect. International Journal of Bilingualism, 12(4), 281–302. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blackwell, A. (2005). Acquiring the English adjective lexicon: Relationships with input properties and adjectival semantic typology. Journal of Child Language, 321, 535–562. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bylund, E. (2009). Maturational constraints and first language attrition. Language Learning, 591, 687–715. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bylund, E., Abrahamsson, N., & Hyltenstam, K. (2009). The role of language aptitude in first language attrition: The case of prepubescent attriters. Applied Linguistics, 31/3, 443–464. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Does L1 maintenance hamper L2 nativelikeness? A study of L2 ultimate attainment in early Spanish-Swedish bilinguals. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 341, 215–241. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bonnesen, M. (2006). The status of the “weaker” language in unbalanced French/German bilingual language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(2), 177–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bornstein, M. H., Haynes, M. O., & Painter, K. M. (1998). Sources of child vocabulary competence: a multivariate model. Journal of Child Language, 251, 367–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borschev, V., & Partee, B. H. (2002). The Russian genitive of negation: Theme-rheme structure or perspective structure? Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 101, 105–144.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ceytlin, S. (2000). Jazyk i rebjenok: Lingvistika detskoi rechi [The language and the child: Linguistics of child speech]. Gumanitarny izdatel’ski centr VLADOS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009a). Recheviye oshibki i ih preduprejdenie [Speech mistakes and prevention of them]. URSS, Moskva.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009b). Grammaticheskie oshibki v osvojenii rebenkom Russkogo jazyka kak pervogo i kak vtorogo [Grammatical mistakes in the course of the acquisition of Russian as L1 and as L2]. Voprosy psycholingvistiki, 91, 43–53. St Petersburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, R. (2001). Information theory, complexity and linguisitic descriptions. In S. Bertolo (Ed.), Language acquisition and learnability (pp. 126–172). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, E. (2009). First language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corbett, G. (1982). Gender in Russian: an account of gender specification and its relationship to declension. Russian Linguistics, 61, 197–232. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1991). Gender. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corbett, G., & Fraser, N. (1993). Network Morphology: A DATR Account of Russian nominal inflection. Journal of Linguistics, 29 (1), 113–142. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Houwer, A. (1987). Two at a time: an exploration of how children acquire two languages from birth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2007). Parental language input pattern and children’s bilingual use. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28 (3), 411–424. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009). Bilingual first language acquisition. Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Villiers, J. G. (1985). Learning how to use verbs: lexical coding and the influence of the input. Journal of Child Language, 121, 587–595. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dixon, L. Q. (2011). The role of home and school factors in predicting English vocabulary among bilingual kindergarten children in Singapore. Applied Psycholinguistics, 321, 141–168. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Döpke, S. (1992). One parent, one language: An interactional approach. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2000). The weaker language in simultaneous bilingualism: Why it is not like L2. Unpublished manuscript. Monash University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2006). How children learn language: A focus on resilience. In K. McCartney, & D. Phillips (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of early childhood development (pp. 252–274). Blackwell Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gvozdyev, A. (1961). Voprosy izuchenija detskoy rechi [Child speech studies.]. Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1981). Ot pervyh slov do pervogo klassa. Dnevnik nauchnyh nabludeniy [From the first words to the first grade. The diary of scientific observations]. Saratov: Saratovsky universitet.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guasti, M. T. (2002). Language acquisition. The growth of grammar. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Horowitz, F. D. (1987). Exploring developmental theories: toward a structural/behavioral model of development. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ionova, N. V. (2007). Semanticheskie funkcii padejnyh i predlojno-padejnyh konstrukcij imeni suschestvitel’nogo v rechi detei doshkol’nogo vozrasta [Semantic functions of case forms and prepositional phrases in the speech of preschool children]. Unpublished PhD Dissertation. Cherepovets.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Isurin, L. (2000). Deserted island or a child's first language forgetting. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3(02), 151–166.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamynina, A. (1999). Sovremennyi Russkij jazyk. Morfologija [Modern Russian language. Morphology]. Moscow: Moskovskij Universitet.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kornishova, D. (2010). First language acquisition of numeral expressions. Unpublished dissertation. EssexGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kurilovich, E. (1962). Ocherki po lingvistike [Linguisitic essays]. Moskva: Inostrannaya Literature.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leikin, M. (1998). Acquisition of locative prepositions in Russian. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 271, 91–108. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lieven, E. (2008). Learning the English auxiliary: a usage-based approach. In: H. Behrens (Eds.), Corpora in language acquisition research: Finding structure in data (Trends in language acquisition research, (vol. 61, pp. 60–98). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCartney, K. (1984). Effect of quality of day care environment on children’s language development. Developmental Psychology, 201, 244–260. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meisel, J. (2007). The weaker language in early child bilingualism: Acquiring a first language as a second language? Applied Psycholinguistics, 281, 495–514. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Minkov, M. (2011). Inflectional morphology acquisition in the first language: An incomplete acquisition or complete non-acquisition? Unpublished MA Thesis. Haifa: University of Haifa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism. Re-examining the Age Factor. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Myranovsky, A. (2011). Osvojenie padeznoj sistemy detmi-monolingvami [Acquisition of case system by monolingual children]. Unpublished Thesis. Perm: University of Perm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Naigles, L., & Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1998). Why are verbs learned before other verbs? Effects of input frequency and structure on children’s early verb use. Journal of Child Language, 251, 95–120. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Naigles, L. R., & Mayeux, L. (2001). Television as incidental language teacher. In Singer, D. G., and Singer, J. L. (Eds.), Handbook of Children and the Media (pp. 135–152). Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Grady, W. (1997). Syntactic development. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paradis, J., & Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: what is the role of the input? Journal of Child Language, 301, 371–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Partee, B. H., & Borschev, V. (2004, September). The semantics of Russian Genitive of Negation: The nature and role of Perspectival Structure. In Semantics and Linguistic Theory (Vol. 141, pp. 212–234). Ithaca, NY: CLC PublicationsGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Partee, B. H., Borschev, V., Paducheva, E. V., Testelets, Y., & Yanovich, I. (2011). Russian genitive of negation alternations: The role of verb semantics. Scando-Slavica, 57(2), 135–159. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patterson, J. L. (2002). Relationships of expressive vocabulary to frequency of reading and television experience among bilingual toddlers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 231, 493–508. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernandez, V. L., & Oller, D. K. (1997). The relation of input to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied Psycholinguistics, 181, 41–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Place, S., & Hoff, E. (2011). Properties of dual language exposure that influence 2-year-olds’ bilingual proficiency. Child Development, 82(6), 1834–1849. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. (2006). Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 14(2), 191–262.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Polinski, M. (2007). Acquisition of Russian: Uninterrupted and incomplete scenarios. The Slavic and East European Language Research Center. Retrieved from [URL].
Randall, J. (1992). The catapult hypothesis: An approach to unlearning. In J. Weissenborn, H. Goodluck, & T. Roeper (Eds.), Theoretical issues in language acquisition: Continuity and change in development (pp. 93–138). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scheele, A. F., Leseman, P. M., & Mayo, A. Y. (2010). The home language environment of monolingual and bilingual children and their language proficiency. Applied Psycholinguistics, 311, 117–140. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schlyter, S. (1993). The weaker language in bilingual Swedish-French children. In K. Hyltenstam, & A. Viberg (Eds.), Progression and regression in language: Sociocultural, neuropsychological and linguistic perspectives (pp. 289–308). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schlyter, S., & Hakansson, G. (1994). Word order in Swedish as the first language, second language and weaker language in bilinguals. Scandinavian Working Papers on Bilingualism, 91, 49–66.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shimpi, P. M., Fedewa, M., & Hans, S. (2011). Social and linguistic input in low-income African American mother-child dyads from 1 month through 2 years: Relations to vocabulary development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1–18.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stankiewicz, E. (1968). Declension and gradation of Russian substantives in contemporary standard Russian. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Theakston, A. L., Lieven, E., Pine, J., & Rowland, C. (2004). Semantic generality, input frequency and the acquisition of syntax. Journal of Child Language, 311, 61–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Timberlake, A. (1993). Russian. In B. Comrie, & G. G. Corbett (Eds.), The Slavonic languages (pp. 827–887). London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2004). A reference grammar of Russian. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vinogradov, V. (1972). Russij jazyk. Grammaticheskoe uchenie o slove [The Russian language. A grammatical study of the word]. Moskva: Vysschaja shkola.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, S., (2003). Lexically specific constructions in the acquisition of inflection in English. Journal of Child Language, 30 (1), 75–115. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yuuko, U. (2006). English vocabulary development in bilingual kindergarteners: What are the best predictors? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 9 (1), 33–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zakharova, A. (1958) Acquisition of forms of grammatical case by preschool children. In D. I. Slobin (Eds.), The Crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (pp.281–292). L. Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zaliznjak, A. (1967). Russkoe imennoe slovoizmenenie [Russian nominal inflection]. Moscow, Russia: Nauka.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Chrabaszcz, Anna, Nina Ladinskaya & Anastasiya Lopukhina
2025. Acquisition of Russian noun case by bilingual children: lexical cues to case assignment in real and novel words. Language Acquisition 32:1 ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Laleko, Oksana
2024. Heritage Language Forms. In The Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics, ► pp. 657 ff. DOI logo
Meir, Natalia & Maria Polinsky
2024. One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Once I Caught a Fish Alive: Numerical Phrases in Child and Adult Heritage Russian. Languages 9:8 ► pp. 261 ff. DOI logo
Montrul, Silvina
2022. Heritage language speakers inform the critical period hypothesis for first and second language acquisition. In Generative SLA in the Age of Minimalism [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 67], ► pp. 265 ff. DOI logo
Antonova-Unlu, Elena, Li Wei & Didem Kaya-Soykan
2021. Interfaces in the returnees’ heritage language: Is the complete (re-)activation possible?. International Journal of Bilingualism 25:6 ► pp. 1764 ff. DOI logo
Meir, Natalia & Bibi Janssen
2021. Child Heritage Language Development: An Interplay Between Cross-Linguistic Influence and Language-External Factors. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Antonova-Ünlü, Elena
2019. Syntax–pragmatic and morphology–pragmatic interfaces in sequential bilingual language acquisition: The case of Russia-Turkish and English-Turkish bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism 23:5 ► pp. 1137 ff. DOI logo
Meir, Natalia
2018. Morpho-Syntactic Abilities of Unbalanced Bilingual Children: A Closer Look at the Weaker Language. Frontiers in Psychology 9 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue