The role of Aktionsart in the acquisition of Russian aspect

Abstract

In contrast to what is often assumed in universalist approaches to language acquisition, this paper demonstrates that the acquisition of aspect in at least one language, namely in Russian, is not based on an innate primitive category. The results of a comprehension experiment run with Russian preschool children (age 2-6 years) show that Russian aspect is not acquired in a single step, but rather develops as a slow process. This development is further shown to depend on differences in the intrinsic temporal semantics ('Aktionsart') of Show more