The author argues that a componential analysis of Russian case desinences is possible and useful, and that it consequently deserves a place in the linguistic analysis of Contemporary Standard Russian. The two basic assumptions of the author's theory are: first, that the meaning of cases reflects primarily the relation of substantives to the action…

Investigates whether the aspect-before-tense hypothesis accounts for the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology in child second language English. Addressed whether early uses of tense-aspect inflections can be analyzed as a spell-out of semantic/aspectual features of verbs. Data are from a longitudinal study of an 8-year-old Russian-speaking child…

This paper demonstrates the means which Russian has to render English where the use of articles if required. The author concentrates on the function of the pronoun, preposition, and adverb which modify the Russian sentence. Numerous examples of English phrases and statements are provided in the target language. (RL)

This article discusses ways in which vocabulary building can be simplified for the student of Russian. Computer analysis of text vocabulary can assist in selecting words to be learned and assessing the relative difficulty of texts for both students and teachers. (CHK)

The cardinal aim of this paper is to demonstrate interrelationships between patterns of social behavior and patterns of terminology. The author postulates that the terminology significantly symbolizes behavioral patterns and proceeds to examine the relationship of Russian kinship terminology and social structure in the context of a pre-industrial…

Investigates the influence of the prefix "o-/ob-" on the choice of case for nominal objects of prefixed verbs, using a semantic field analysis. Focuses on four semantic functions: (1) objective; (2) locative; (3) factitive; and (4) comparative. The results are useful both to theoretical linguists and to teachers of Russian. (LMO)

This article describes a brief course in Russian literature for sixth-form school students, designed to provide a review of A-Level texts, to stimulate interest in literature, and to develop a sense of the personal relevance of literature in the students. (CLK)

The social, economic, political and cultural changes brought about by the Cuban Revolution have elicited linguistic changes. Although the Revolution is only fifteen years old, these changes have reached the morphological and semantic components of the language. This paper explains the Russian influence and discusses and classifies…

This collection of working papers contains four papers on varied topics in lintuistic theory. The first paper, "Some Grammatical Correlates of Felicity Conditions and Presuppositions," attempts to show that there is a systematic relationship between what a speaker of a language does in uttering sentences of that language and the syntactic form of…

Studies of second-language (L2) acquisition have often addressed the issue of parameter-setting among L2 learners. Much work has been done on the setting of syntactic parameters in L2 acquisition-e.g., the verb-raising parameter (see White (1990/1991), among others), the V2-parameter (see Robertson and Sorace (1999), among others), and the…

Papers from the Proceedings of the 17th meeting of the AIMAV (Association internationale pour le developpement de la communication interculturelle) are collected in this volume. Conference papers appear either in English, in French, or in Russian. For purposes of this abstract, all titles below have been translated into English. The…

In addressing questions of semantics and grammar in child language, this study focuses on the generation of speech activity. Specific attention is on the formation and development of speech units during speech generation. The study looks at the process by which preschool children master various linguistic items and categories using semantics,…

This paper raises the question of the relationship between Russian verbs of motion and verbal aspect, and presents a discussion concerning the typology of motion verbs with respect to aspect. After establishing terminology and presenting the corpus of verbs considered to be verbs of motion, the authors discuss the traditional criteria for…

There have been several recent works dealing with the Russian "root system." Most of these works operate on the claim that vocabulary-building in advanced Russian classes may be accelerated by a mastery of the systems of derivational morphology. Townsend's "Russian Word Formation," Gribble's "Russian Root List," and…

This paper suggests methods for teaching the Russian verbs that govern what are loosely termed "objects" in oblique cases. The case government of such verbs is not necessarily an individual irregularity. Definite patterns emerge, both morphological and semantic, to facilitate grouping these verbs into classes. Russian verbs requiring genitive…