L2 ACQUISITION OF RUSSIAN ASPECT BY L1 TURKISH SPEAKERS

Abstract

This study looks at second language (L2) acquisition of aspect in Russian by adult first language (L1) speakers to examine whether L1Turkish/L2 Russian speakers are as sensitive as native Russian speakers to the morphosyntax of Russian aspect involving perfective and imperfective form with its telicity-assigning mechanisms in Russian. We tested 16 L1Turkish/L2 Russian speakers and 16 L1 Russian native speakers on an online Semantic Entailment (SE) task with telicity and boundedness semantic features and a Truth-Value Judgment (TVJ) task involving sentences with perfective and imperfective forms including quantity and non quantity internal argument themes. The results of independent samples t-test conducted with the data from the SET indicated significant differences between two groups. L2 speakers are less successful than L1 Russian, in particular in the comprehension of sentences with perfective aspect. The results of the Truth Value Judgment (TVJ) test also confirmed these results.