We explored children's early interpretation of numerals and linguistic number marking, in order to test the hypothesis (e.g., Carey (2004). Bootstrapping and the origin of concepts. "Daedalus", 59-68) that children's initial distinction between "one" and other numerals (i.e., "two," "three," etc.) is bootstrapped from a prior distinction between…

This paper examines article use in the L2-English of adult and child speakers of Russian, an article-less language. In earlier work on articles in adult L2-English, Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004) proposed that speakers of article-less L1s fluctuate between dividing English articles on the basis of definiteness vs. specificity, as a result of direct…

This study examined whether singular/plural marking in a language helps children learn the meanings of the words "one," "two," and "three." First, CHILDES data in English, Russian (which marks singular/plural), and Japanese (which does not) were compared for frequency, variability, and contexts of number-word use.…

An hypothesis is proposed to explain the differences between the Russian conjunctions "no" and "odnako." Nine short passages are discussed to illustrate their usage. (RM)

Sequel to an article by S.J. Roganova in Russisch'', 2, 73. (DD)

Uses six examples to substantiate the hypothesis that masculine root words in reference to males in Russian cover a broader semantic space than do feminine root words in reference to females. Women share in the same wide space only when implicitly included in a masculine root. (Author/BK)

Two consecutive sentences in Russian with the same verbal predicate often show an aspectual shift. The thematic role of the verb is underlined by lexical items that signal the communicative structure of the sentence. Interdependence between theme-rheme articulation is more important than the relationship between aspect and modality. (Text is in…

Considers the various meanings and uses of the Russian particle "khot'." The article adapts material from "Particles in Colloquial Russian" (Progress Publishers, Moscow) by A.N. Vasilyeva. (Text is in German.) (FB)

This article provides a brief history of selected Russian economic terms, traces the history of their valuation, and focuses on the rationale for their evolution. (Contains eight references.) (JL)

Two major mechanisms of encoding telicity across languages are either marking the object as exhaustively countable or measurable, or utilizing a specific prefix on the verbal form. English predominantly uses the first mechanism, while Russian mostly utilizes the second. The learning task of an English speaker acquiring Russian, then, is two-fold:…

Cross-linguistic borrowing (overt use of words from the other language) and transfer (use of semantic or syntactic structures from the other language without active switching to that language) were examined during language production in Russian-English bilinguals. Grammatical category (noun/verb) and level of concreteness were found to influence…