ISSN: 2306-5737E-ISSN: 2658-4069
Acta Linguistica Petropolitana
Transactions of the Institute for Linguistic Studies
ISSN: 2306-5737E-ISSN: 2658-4069
Acta Linguistica Petropolitana
Transactions of the Institute for Linguistic Studies 

Morphosyntactic tendencies of Russian bilinguals in Finland: Corpus-based analysis of errors in prepositional phrases

DOI:10.30842/alp2306573716213
PDF, 540.61 kb
Vlasova Ye. A. Izmeneniya v predlozhno-padezhnom upravlenii pri finsko-russkom dvuyazychii: korpusnyy analiz. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. 2020. XVI(2): 366–396.

This paper presents a corpus-based analysis of morphosyntactic errors made by Finnish Russian heritage speakers belonging to the second generation of Russian emigrants in Finland. This study focuses on the Russian prepositional phrase government, which is reportedly an unstable syntactic phenomenon in Russian varieties across the world. The research literature reports two regular contact-induced tendencies concerning violation of Russian grammatical rules after prepositions: a) a loss of case government and an overuse of the Nominative, which is a common non-standard phenomenon among foreign language learners of Russian b) a mixture of oblique case forms, which is typical for Russian dialects and spoken language. This study identifies the regular changes, detected in a group of Russian heritage speakers in Finland, and explores to what extent the non-standard government originates from the structural properties of the dominant Finnish language. The data covers written production of university students, which are high-proficient Russian-Finnish bilinguals. The corpus-based approach combines basic statistical metrics and linguistic analysis of non-standard prepositional phrases. The results indicate strong tendency to overuse the Genitive instead of the Prepositional and the Instrumental, meanwhile the Nominative, manifesting the loss of government, occurs rarely in the prepositional phrase. The study reveals that the speech of bilingual speakers of two inflecting languages with ramified systems of case marking practically does not develop analyticity and attrition of case government in prepositional phrases. The incomplete acquisition of government manifests itself as a mixture of correct and incorrect forms of oblique cases induced by the prepositional pattern of the dominant language.

Keywords
prepositional phrases, Russian Learner Corpus, heritage Russian, bilingualism, Finnish language
References
Filippova 1964
V. M. Filippova. Izmeneniya v glagolnykh slovosochetaniyakh [Changes in verb phrases]. N. Yu. Shvedova (ed.). Izmeneniya v sisteme slovosochetaniy russkogo literaturnogo yazyka XIX veka [Changes in the system of phrases of the Russian literary language of the 19th century]. Moscow: Nauka,1964.
Glovinskaya 1996
M. Ya. Glovinskaia. Aktivnye protsessy v grammatike (na materiale innovatsiy i massovykh yazykovykh oshibok) [Active processes in grammar (based on linguistic innovations and frequent errors)]. E. A. Zemskaya (ed.). Russkiy yazyk kontsa XX stoletiya (1985−1995) [The Russian language in the end of the 20th century (1985−1995)]. Moscow: Yazyki russkoy kultury, 1996. P. 237−304.
Glovinskaya 2004
M. Ya. Glovinskaya. Obshchie tipy izmeneniy v yazyke pervogo pokoleniya emigratsii [General types of changes in the language of the first-generation emigrants]. A. Mustajoki, E. Protasova (eds.). Russkiy chelovek v inoyazychnom okruzhenii [Russian person in foreign language environment]. Slavica Helsingiensia. Vol. 24. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2004. P. 13−20.
Glovinskaya 2012
M. Ya. Glovinskaya. O chem svidetel’stvuet reaktsiya nositelei yazyka na grammaticheskie innovatsii [What does native speakers reaction to grammatical innovations tell us about]. A. D. Shmelev (otv. red.). Voprosy kul’tury rechi [Issues on Speech Culture]. Iss. XI. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoy kultury, 2012. P. 178−185.
Hakulinen, Karlsson 1995
A. Hakulinen, F. Karlsson. Nykysuomen lauseoppia [Syntax of Modern Finnish]. 3. painos. Jyväskylä: Gummerus, 1995.
Khashimov 2018
R. I. Khashimov. Dvuyazychie i interferentsiya: sushchnost, tipologiya i funktsionirovanie [Bilingualism and interference: nature, typology, and functioning]. Moscow: Flinta; Nauka, 2018.
Kirichenko 2002
A. S. Kirichenko. Semanticheskaya struktura predloga «mezhdu» [Semantic structure of the preposition mezhdu]. V. A. Plungyan (ed.). Issledovaniya po teorii grammatiki 2. Grammatikalizatsiya prostranstvennykh znacheniy [Studies on grammar theory-2. Grammaticalization of spatial meanings]. Moscow: Russkie slovari, 2002. P. 183−198.
Kustova 2011
G. I. Kustova. Padezh. Materialy dlya proekta korpusnogo opisaniya russkoy grammatiki [The Case. Materials for the project of corpus-based description of the Russian grammar (http://rusgram.ru)]. [Published as a manuscript]. Moscow, 2011.
Leisiö 2004
L. Leisiö. Sijamuotojen käytöstä Suomen venäjässä [The use of case forms in Russian vernaculars in Finland]. Virittäjä. 2004. No. 2. S. 162−199.
Lapteva 1999/2014
O. A. Lapteva. Zhivaya russkaya rech s teleekrana: razgovornyy plast televizionnoy rechi v normativnom aspekte [Live Russian speech on television: normative approach to the spoken layer of television language]. 7th edition. Moscow: LENAND, 2014.
Mustajoki 1984
A. Mustajoki. O raznykh stepenyakh sootvetstviya glagol’nogo upravleniya v russkom i finskom yazykakh [On different equivalency degree of verb government in Russian and Finnish]. Studia Slavica Finlandensia. Vol. I. Helsinki: Neuvostoliittoinstituutti, 1984. P. 73−87.
Mustajoki 1992
A. Mustajoki (ed.). Nashi oshibki. Klassifikatsiya oshibok v rechi studentov russkogo yazyka Khelsinkskogo universiteta [Our errors: classification of errors made by Russian language students from the Helsinki University]. Helsingin yliopiston Slaavilaisten kielten laitoksen raportteja. Vol. 15.Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 1992.
Nikunlassi, Protasova 2014
A. Nikunlassi, E. Yu. Protasova (eds.). O vazhnosti oshibok dlya issledovaniya mnogoyazychiya [On importance of errors in research of multilingualism]. A. Nikunlassi, E. Yu. Protasova (eds.). Instrumentariy rusistiki: oshibki i mnogoyazychie [Instrumentarium of Russian studies: errors and multilingualism]. Slavica Helsingiensia. Vol. 45. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2014. P. 5−13.
Polinsky 2018
M. Polinsky. Heritage Languages and Their Speakers. Cambridge: Сambridge University Press, 2018.
Pozharitskaya 2005
S. K. Pozharitskaya. Russkaya dialektologiya [Russian dialectology]. Moscow: Akademicheskiy proekt: Paradigma, 2005.
Protasova 2012
E. Yu. Protasova. Yazykovaya kompetentsiya studentov-bilingvov [Language competence of bilungual students]. E. E. Yurkov, E. Yu. Protasova, T. I. Popova, A. Nikunlassi. Formirovanie i otsenka kommunikativnoy kompetentsii bilingvov v protsesse dvuyazychnogo obrazovaniya [Formation and evaluation of communicative competence of bilinguals in bilingual education]. St. Petersburg: MIRS, 2012. P. 294−311.
Protasova 2014
E. Yu. Protasova. Mnogoyazychie i oshibki [Multilingualism and errors]. Berlin: Retorika, 2014.
Protasova, Salatov 2015
E. Yu. Protasova, I. Salatov. Karty, kartochki, kartinki. Vyp. 7. Vot kak-to tak [Cards, tiny cards, and pictures. Iss. 7. Vot kak-to tak]. St. Petersburg: Zlatoust, 2015.
Rakhilina 2014
E. V. Rakhilina. Grammatika oshibok: v poiskakh konstant [Grammar of errors: looking for constants]. V. A. Plungyan (ed.). Yazyk. Konstanty. Peremennye. St. Petersburg: Aleteiya, 2014. P. 87−95.
Rakhilina et al. 2016
E. Rakhilina, A. Vyrenkova, E. Mustakimova, A. Ladygina, I. Smirnov. Building a learner corpus for Russian. Proceedings of the joint workshop on NLP for Computer Assisted Language Learning and NLP for Language Acquisition. 2016. P. 66−75.
Rubinstein 1995
G. Rubinstein. On Case Errors Made in Oral Speech by American Learners of Russian. The Slavic and East European Journal. 1995. No. 39 (3). P. 408−429. doi:10.2307/308241
Rusakova 2013
M. V. Rusakova. Elementy antropotsentricheskoy grammatiki russkogo yazyka [Elements of anthropocentric grammar of the Russian language]. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoy kultury, 2013.
Sichinava 2018
D. V. Sichinava. Predlog. Materialy dlya proekta korpusnogo opisaniya russkoy grammatiki [Preposition. Materials for the project of corpus-based description of the Russian grammar] (http://rusgram.ru). (Published as a manuscript) Moscow, 2018.
Tseitlin 2011
S. N. Tseitlin (ed.). Put v yazyk. Odnoyazychie i dvuyazychie [A path to language. Monolingualism and bilingualism]. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoy kultury, 2011.
Tseitlin, Ababkova 2011
S. N. Tseitlin, M. I. Ababkova. Osvoenie substantivnykh sintaksem russkoyazychnym rebenkom i inofonom [Acquisition of substantive syntaxemes by a monilingual child and a foreign learner]. S. N. Tseitlin (ed.). Put v yazyk. Odnoyazychie i dvuyazychie [A path to language. Monolingualism and bilingualism]. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoy kultury, 2011.
Vakhtin et al 2010
N. B. Vakhtin, A. Mustajoki, E. Protasova. Russkie yazyki [Russian languages]. Instrumentarium of Linguistics: Sociolinguistic Approaches to Non-Standard Russian. Slavica Helsingiensia. 2010. № 40. P. 5−16.
Vepreva, Mikhailova 2014
I. Vepreva, O. Mikhailova. Grammaticheskie oshibki v regionalnykh SMI [Grammatical errors in regional media]. A. Nikunlassi, E.Yu. Protasova (eds.). Instrumentariy rusistiki: oshibki i mnogoyazychie [Instrumentarium of Russian studies: errors and multilingualism]. Slavica Helsingiensia. Vol. 45. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2014. P. 21−34.
Vyrenkova et al 2014
A. S. Vyrenkova, M. S. Polinskaya, E. V. Rakhilina. Grammatika oshibok i grammatika konstruktsiy: «eritazhnyy» («unasledovannyy») russkiy yazyk [Grammar of errors and construction grammar: the «heritage» («inherited») Russian language]. Voprosy yazykoznaniya. 2014. No 3. P. 3−19.
Zaliznyak 1980
A. A. Zaliznyak. Grammaticheskiy slovar russkogo yazyka [Grammatical repertoire of the Russian language]. Moscow: Russkiy yazyk,1980.
Zaliznyak 2002
A. A. Zaliznyak. Russkoe imennoe slovoizmenenie: s prilozheniem izbrannykh rabot po sovremennomu russkomu yazyku i obshchemu yazykoznaniyu [Russian nominal inflection with a supplement of selected papers on Modern Russian and general linguistics]. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoy kultury, 2002.
Zolotova 1988
G. A. Zolotova. Sintaksicheskiy slovar: repertuar elementarnykh edinits russkogo yazyka [Syntactic dictionary: repertoire of elementary units of the Russian language]. Moscow: Nauka, 1988.
Yakobson 1958/1985
R. O. Yakobson. Morfologicheskie nablyudeniya nad slavyanskim skloneniem: sostav russkikh padezhnykh form [Morphological explorations of Slavic inflection: structure of Russian case forms]. R. O. Yakobson. Izbrannye raboty. Moscow: Progress, 1985.
Yurkov et al. 2012
E. E. Yurkov, E. Yu. Protasova, T. I. Popova, A. Nikunlassi. Formirovanie i otsenka kommunikativnoy kompetentsii bilingvov v protsesse dvuyazychnogo obrazovaniya [Formation and evaluation of communicative competence of bilinguals in bilingual education]. St. Petersburg: MIRS, 2012.
Keywords
prepositional phrases, Russian Learner Corpus, heritage Russian, bilingualism, Finnish language
ScopusSCImago Journal & Country RankE-Library.ruCrossRefCyberLeninkaVAKERIH Plus