Tense and Aspect in Early Child Russian

• Published in: Language acquisition Vol. 10; no. 4; pp. 321 - 337
• Main Author: Bar-Shalom, Eva
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mahwah Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc 01.01.2002; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; Psychology Press
• Subjects: Adults; Child Language; Children; First language acquisition; Future tense; Grammatical aspect; Grammatical tenses; Language Acquisition; Morphology (Languages); Parent Child Relationship; Past tense; Present tense; Russian; Tenses (Grammar); Uncommonly Taught Languages; Verbs; Videotape Recordings
• ISSN: 1048-9223; 1532-7817
• DOI: 10.1207/S15327817LA1004_2

Naturalistic observation of child-parent interaction is used for investigating the early temporal and aspectual morphology in four monolingual Russian-speaking children (ages 1;6-2;11). The analysis of data obtained in weekly videotaped session shows early mastery of all tenses as well as grammatical aspect at an early age. This point has been a topic of debate in the acquisition literature since at least the early 1960s. The participants produced a full range of verb types in all the tenses even at the youngest age. In this respect, my findings closely parallel those of Weist, Wysocka, Witkowska-Stadnik, Buczowska, and Konieczna (1984) for child Polish. I found both telic and atelic verbs in the past tense in both perfective and imperfective aspects. I also found "aspectual pairs" of the same verb used in the correct circumstances. This lends further support to children's early understanding of aspectual differences. In addition, a developmental trend was found in children's production of verbs in the imperfective aspect. The percentage of imperfectives is typically the highest in the oldest children.