Classical Studies on the Acquisition of Russian as a First Language (1900–1950): An Overview

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: structuralismuniversals and language-specific featuresindividual strategiessystem and normative constraints Acknowledgements I express my gratitude to the Foundation of the President of Russian Federation for supporting this research as part of the grant SS-3433.2010.6 ‘Saint Petersburg School of Functional Grammar’. I am also thankful to J. A. Frantsuz for his generous help in improving my English. Many thanks go to the editors, I. Dabašinskienė and V. Kalėdaitė, for their numerous and helpful suggestions that were all accepted. Many thanks go to the anonymous reviewers for their numerous suggestions that I tried to follow. All remaining errors are mine. Notes 1. Most of the facts from his personal life come from oral reports given in Saint Petersburg (2003) and Cologne (2004) by Magdalena Smoczynska, who worked for several years with the archive of Baudouin de Courtenay at Jagellonian University, Krakow. I apologize if I missed some published papers by Smoczynska. Those interested may consult the materials of two Symposia in honor of Baudouin de Courtenay in Kazan (1995) and Krakow (2005). 2. Motherese, or parentese, is an informal synonym of ‘baby talk’, also referred to as ‘caretaker speech’, ‘infant-directed speech (IDS)’ or ‘child-directed speech (CDS)’. It is defined as a nonstandard form of speech used by adults in talking to toddlers and infants. It is usually delivered with a ‘cooing’ intonation pattern, shortening and simplifying of words. Most modern scholars make a difference between these concepts, using CDS or IDS for the whole linguistic ‘input’ accessible for the child, whereas ‘babytalk’ is understood as a special sociolinguistic register. According to Stephany (1985 Stephany, U. 1985. Aspekt, Tempus und Modalität. Zur Entwicklung der Verbalgrammatik in der neugriechischen Kindersprache, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. [Google Scholar], p. 182), this distinction dates back to Beheydt (1975 Beheydt, L. 1975. Environmental Language, Language Spoken to Children, Baby Talk Preprint 29 (Department Linguistiek, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) [Google Scholar]) and Newport et al. (1977 Newport, EL, Gleitman, H and Gleitman, LR. 1977. “Mother, I’d Rather Do It Myself: Some Effects and Non-Effects of Maternal Speech Style”. In Talking to Children: Language Input and Acquisition, Edited by: Snow, CE and Ferguson, CA. 109–49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]) and was elaborated by Snow and Ferguson (1977 Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, CA. (ed.) (1977) Talking to Children: Language Input and Acquisition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) [Google Scholar]). However, the terminological discussion is still going on: compare the term ‘exposure language’ recently proposed by D. I. Slobin (Ravid et al. 2008 Ravid, D, Dressler, WU, Braha, N-S, Korecky-Kröll, K, Souman, A, Rehfeldt, K, Laaha, S, Bertl, J, Basbøl, H and Gillis, S. 2008. “Core Morphology in Child Directed Speech: Crosslinguistic Corpus Analysis of Noun Plurals”. In Corpora in Language Acquisition Research: History, Methods, Perspectives, Edited by: Behrens, H. 25–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [Google Scholar], p. 26). 3. Many linguists suppose that verbs play a triggering role in the acquisition of grammar since they are central elements of the sentence. This attitude is especially characteristic of formal linguistic approaches.