Title: Requests in the Speech of Adult Heritage and Native Speakers of Russian
1Requests in the Speech of Adult Heritage and
Native Speakers of Russian
- Irina Dubinina
- idubinin_at_brandeis.edu
- Bryn Mawr College Brandeis University
2Special thanks
- Dr. Sophia Malamud (coding production data and
contributing to the analysis discussion) - Anna Slavina (technical support)
3Requests speech act universals
- When a request concerns A that will benefit S
and inconvenience H, Russian English both
prefer indirect strategies (notably,
interrogatives) - - Ne podbrosiš do doma?
- NEG give.lift.PFV.2.SG to home
- - Can you give me a ride?
- Conventionalized indirect R may involve sentences
concerning (Searle) - - Ss wish or want that H do A
- - Hs ability to do A
- - Hs desire or willingness to do A
- - H doing A
4Requests English vs. Russian
- English prefers Hs ability to perform A
- Russian prefers either Hs ability OR H doing A
(perfective future). -
- - Ty ne mozhesh/ne mog by
podbrosit mena do doma? - You.SG NEG can.2.SG /NEG can.SBJV
give.lift me.ACC to home - - Can/could you give me a lift home?
- - Ty ne podbrosish mena do
doma? - You.SG NEG give.lift.PFV.2.SG me.ACC to
home - - Will you give me a lift home?
5Requests English vs. Russian
- Morpho-syntactic means of expressing politeness
- English conventionally uses mood (subjunctive)
- Russian uses antithetical particle (NEG) alone
or together with subjunctive particle
(subjunctive mood). The use of NEG is almost
obligatory to signal requestive intent. - Ty ne možeš/ne mog by
podbrosit menja do doma? - You.SG NEG can.2.SG /NEG can.SBJV give.lift
me.ACC to home - Ty možeš// mog by podbrosit
menja do doma? - You.SG can.2.SG /can.SBJV give.lift
me.ACC to home -
- - Can/could you give me a lift home?
6Requests English vs. Russian
- Lexical means of marking politeness
- English often inserts please even in
interrogatives - Russian rarely uses please in interrogatives,
especially in H doing A -
- - Ty ne mog by menja podbrosit do
doma, požalujsta? - You.SG NEG can.SBJV me.ACC give.lift
to home, please -
- - Ty ne podbrosiš menja do
doma, požalujsta? - You.SG NEG give.lift.PFV.2.SG me.ACC to
home, please -
- - Could you give me a lift home, please?
7Requests English vs. Russian
- Orientation of requests
- Although both languages produce requests
focusing on either the H or the S, there are
preferred patterns. -
- English uses S-oriented sentences
- Russian likes H-oriented sentences.
- - Ty ne daš mne deneg?
- You.SG NEG give.PFV.2.SG me.DAT money.GEN
- - Could I borrow some money?
8Russian specifics
- Možno impersonal modal with dual meaning
- - possibility (usually with imperfective
infinitive) - - permission (with perfective infinitive)
- Requests usually refer to a one-time completed
action ? PFV - SO možno suggests a request for
permission. -
- - Možno vzat vašu
knigu? - Psbl.imp to.take.PFV your.PL.ACC book.ACC
- May I take your book?
- Lexical politeness marker is rarely used in these
requests - - Možno požalujsta vzat vašu
knigu? - Psbl.imp please to.take.PFV
your.PL.ACC book.ACC
9Russian specifics
- S questioning H performing A the same
propositional content as the interrogative - - Ty ne zakroeš okno?
- You.SG NEG close.PFV.2.SG window.ACC
- Word order, aspect, negation, intonation affect
Hs perception - - Okno ty ne zakroeš ?
request-reminder - Window.ACC you.SG NEG close.2.SG
- - Ty ne budeš zakryvat
okno? request-reproach - You.SG NEG will.2.SG close.IPF window.ACC
- - Ty budeš zakryvat okno?
info-seeking Qn - You.SG will.2.SG close.IPF window.ACC
- - Okno ty budeš zarkyvat?
Threat/ warning - Window.ACC you.SG will.2.SG close.IPF
- (Ty okno budeš zakryvat?)
10Russian specifics
- Russian has a larger repertoire than English
- to make conventionally polite indirect requests
in terms of - Utterance content (questioning Hs ability
questioning H doing A) - Morpho-syntactic means of marking politeness
(NEG, SBJV interrogative particle)
11Present study
- No significant studies of HL pragmatics to date
- Yet, HS can function in the language performing a
variety of usual daily communicative tasks well
enough despite grammatical and lexical
deficiencies - Initial data collection and analysis to explore
communicative competence of HS in the framework
already used for L1 and L2 pragmatics (Blum-Kulka
CCSARP)
12Research questions
- Are Russian HS similar or different to NS in
making and understanding requests? -
- How?
- Do HS have their own communicative norms, i.e.
have they restructured pragmatic rules? - If yes, did these new norms develop under the
influence of English or as a result of
morphological restructuring?
13Participants
14Participants heritage speakers
- All college students, traditional college age
- Mean age of immigration to the U.S. 3.52
- (62 left Russia before the age of 6 21 were
born in the U.S.) - 89 never had any schooling in Russian (formal or
informal) - Self-reported language use
- Mean using Russian with mother 85 (SD 27)
- Mean using Russian with father 82.89 (SD
33) - Mean using Russian with grandparents 95 (SD
20) - Mean using Russian with siblings 19 (SD 27)
15Participants heritage speakers
- Native language (self-evaluation)
- English 25.5,
- Russian 51,
- Russian and English 12,
- could not say 6
- Average speech rate
- in Russian 88 wpm (min 36, max 199), SD
26 - in English 148 wpm (min - 76 max- 198), SD
29 - Average speech rate of native Russian speaker
105 - (Polynsky and Kagan, 2007)
16Study design comprehension
- Written questionnaire
- On a crowded bus, a man, speaking with neutral
intonation, addresses you with the following - Utterances for evaluation - from Margaret Mills
study on Russian requestives (1992) include - direct (imperative) requests
- conventionally indirect (surface interrogative)
requests - interrogatives which may be interpreted by native
speakers as non-requests - Variations in word order, aspect, negation, and
lexical markers random grouping of sentences
several versions of questionnaire
17Study design comprehension
- Directness
- This is a direct straightforward request.
- This doesnt look like a typical request, but Id
still take it as a request. - I dont recognize this phrase as a request.
- Politeness
- This request is very rude, rude, impolite,
slightly impolite, polite, too polite
18Main results comprehension
- HS are close to NS in the perception of the
directness and politeness of requests addressed
to them. However, there are differences. - HS are not as sensitive to the changes of word
order influencing politeness - HS do not have the same understanding of the
pragmatic force of verbal aspect (info-seeking Q
vs request) - HS seem to transfer English politeness strategies
onto Russian structures and are not attentive to
details - HS seem to rely on lexical politeness marker in
their perception of politeness more heavily (than
NS).
19- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- vy ne
- you.PL NEG
- zakroete
- will.close.PFV.2.PL
- okno?
- window.ACC
- (p .44)
20politeness
- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- vy ne
- you.PL NEG
- zakroete
- will.close.PFV.2.PL
- okno?
- window.ACC
- (p .34)
21- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- okno
- window.ACC
- vy ne
- you.PL NEG
- zakroete?
- will.close.PFV.2.PL
- (p .39)
22politeness
- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- okno
- window.ACC
- vy ne
- you.PL NEG
- zakroete?
- will.close.PFV.2.PL
-
- (p .000)
23VO order vs OV order
24Discussion comprehension
- Although HS have some understanding of the
pragmatic meaning of word order - (VO request 40 impolite OV 55 impolite)
- BUT they are not as sensitive to the changes in
word order influencing politeness (p .000) as
NS - (Close to 50 in the control group rated the
inverted word order as impolite in comparison to
10 of HS)
25- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- vy ne
- you.PL NEG
- zakroete
- will.close.PFV.2.PL
- okno?
- window.ACC
- (p .44)
26- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- vy ne
- you.PL NEG
- budete zakryvat
- will.2.PL to.close.IPFV
- okno?
- window.ACC
- (p .005)
27Perf. Aspect (request) Imperf
(info-seek Q)
28Discussion comprehension
- HS do not have the same understanding of the
pragmatic force of verbal aspect (request vs
non-request) as NS - The switch from perfective to imperfective
signaled a change in the communicative intent of
the speaker for the control group (55 not a
request), but not for the HS (0 not a request) - p .005
29politeness
- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- vy ne
- you.PL NEG
- budete zakryvat
- will.2.PL to.close.IFV
- okno?
- window.ACC
- (p .37)
30Discussion comprehension
- HS seem to transfer English politeness strategies
onto Russian structures and are not attentive to
details - možet - part of modal operator (3 SG)
- možete inflected form matching the subject (2
PL) -
- HS are not familiar with punctuation rules and
may ignore comas and hence the suggested
intonation - HS are not bothered by the lack of
conventionalized morpho-syntactic politeness
markers in Russian, such as the antithetical
particle or the subjunctive.
31- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- možet, vy
- maybe you.PL
- zakroete
- will.close.PFV.2.PL
- okno?
- window.ACC
- (p .003)
32politeness
- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- možet, vy
- maybe you.PL
- zakroete
- will.close.PFV.2.PL
- okno?
- window.ACC
- (p .000)
33politeness
- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- zakrojte,
- close.2.PL.IMP
- požalujsta,
- please
- ?kno.
- window.ACC
- (p .17)
34politeness
- Molodoj celovek,
- young man
- zakrojte
- close.2.PL.IMP
- okno!
- window.ACC
- (p .045)
35Discussion comprehension
- HS seem to be less forgiving of the missing
politeness marker please than NS - Transfer from English?
- Absence of grammatical means for expressing
politeness (attrition or incomplete acquisition?)
36Study Design Production
- 2 role-enactments
- SIT 1 asking to borrow lecture notes from a
classmate - SIT 2 asking to borrow a rare book from the
instructor - 10 HS 10 NS
- Head acts identified and analyzed, using a
modified version of the CCSARP taxonomy
(Blum-Kulka and Kasper 1989)
37Main results production
- HS seem to have an impoverished repertoire of
strategies to make indirect polite requests in
Russian both - in types of utterances
- and morpho-syntactic means of politeness
38Main results production (contd)
- HS compensate by
- 1. Relying almost exclusively on lexical
politeness marker, producing combinations which
sound strange to NS (možno požalujsta) -
- Over-using modal možno.
- 3. Relying on morpho-syntactic politeness
strategies from English, e.g. embedded
interrogative under performative (transfer)
39Situation 1 expression of IF (p .11)
40Situation 1 syntactic form (p .73)
41 Situation 1 morpho-syntactic politeness
(p .05)
42Situation 1 lexical politeness (p .045)
43Whats going on?
- MICASE 54 of occurrences of "please" were in
direct requests 35.5 - in indirect requests. - In a subcorpus of RNC 93 of all occurrences of
požalujsta were in direct requests, and zero - in
indirect. - The overusage of požalujsta seems to be a
transfer from the dominant language
44Whats going on?
- HS also overuse the impersonal modal možno -
using it either by itself or in combination with
please (65 total). The latter doesnt happen
in NS speech in this data set. - Corpus data and Google searches produce numerous
examples of this word in requests. However, there
are differences in how NS use možno - HS may be re-analyzing the rule for using možno
(expanding its domain)
45HS request formula
- HS may have their own form of conventionalized
indirect request možno ( požalujsta) regardless
of the social context - Since this form is allowable in the baseline (at
least in some contexts), HS communicative intent
is generally understood quite clearly by NS. - NB especially because all other components of a
request are present
46Whats going on?
- Since one of the interpretations of možno
(especially when its followed by a verb) is the
notion of permission, we may expect to find it
in child-adult interactions more frequently.
(child requests involve a request for permission) - Knowledge of communicative norms depends heavily
on socialization and since there isnt enough
socialization in different contexts (where one
would need to ask for favor), HS dont understand
the difference between the inflected and
impersonal modals. - OR American socialization suppresses Russian
communicative norms in favor of English norms.
47Situation 1 orientation of request(p .007)
48 Situation 2 expression of illocutionary force
(p .96)
49Situation 2 utterance type (p .2)
50Situation 2 morpho-syntactic politeness (p .35)
51Situation 2 lexical politeness (p .12)
52Situation 2 orientation of request (p .17)
53Pedagogical implications
- HS come across as being fluent to some degree
their communicative intent is generally
understood by NS (although most are rated as
non-NS by NS) - What educators can do to help HS get closer to
NS - Develop attention to form
- Explicit instruction on lang specific politeness
strategies - Explicit comparisons of requestive strategies and
politeness markers in dominant and HL - Interactive communicative assignments with
modeling (to practice native-like strategies for
various speech acts)
54Next steps
- CHILDES check for occurrence of možno in input
and output - Check NS for occurrence of možno požalujsta
(followed by noun or by verb?) - Frequency of different strategies whats
preferred by each group? (in addition to možno,
it will be embedding) - Comprehension of requestive utterance without NEG
- Correlation between proficiency and preferred
requestive strategy
55Main results production (contd)
- HS seem to have re-analyzed the impersonal modal
možno to include the meanings of English
can/could and of the Russian inflected model
verb, and use it as a politeness marker - Možno a request marker (communicative norm)
-
56- Not easily translatable, možno is closely related
to the inflected forms of the possibility modal
možeš/ možete (same root) which translates nicely
into English -- can/could - Since English indirect requests conventionally
include a possibility modal (69 of indirect
requests in MICASE), HS may be reinterpreting the
meaning of možno to express the function of
English possibility modals. - Vulnerable domain? ? ambiguity of input and
surface overlap between languages