Chapter 15. Russian verbs of motion

The results of three experiments comparing the processing of verbs of motion by late second language learners, American college students of Russian, and early starters, heritage speakers of Russian, are interpreted within the image-schematic framework developed in cognitive linguistics: the cross-linguistic typological approach introduced by Leonard Talmy (1985, 2000), the extension of this approach to Russian developed by Tore Nesset (2008), and the “thinking for speaking” hypothesis by Dan Slobin (1996). The results of the study support the claim that the system of verbs of motion is not fully acquired even in highly proficient second language learners. They typically lag behind not only native speakers, but also heritage speakers at the same proficiency levels.