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Requests in the Speech of Adult Heritage and Native Speakers of Russian

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Title: Requests in the Speech of Adult Heritage and Native Speakers of Russian


1
Requests in the Speech of Adult Heritage and
Native Speakers of Russian
  • Irina Dubinina
  • idubinin_at_brandeis.edu
  • Bryn Mawr College Brandeis University

2
Special thanks
  • Dr. Sophia Malamud (coding production data and
    contributing to the analysis discussion)
  • Anna Slavina (technical support)

3
Requests 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

4
Requests 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?

5
Requests 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?

6
Requests 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?

7
Requests 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?

8
Russian 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

9
Russian 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?)

10
Russian 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)

11
Present 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)

12
Research 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?

13
Participants
14
Participants 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)

15
Participants 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)

16
Study 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

17
Study 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

18
Main 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)

20
politeness
  • 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)

22
politeness
  • Molodoj celovek,
  • young man
  • okno
  • window.ACC
  • vy ne
  • you.PL NEG
  • zakroete?
  • will.close.PFV.2.PL
  • (p .000)

23
VO order vs OV order
24
Discussion 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)

27
Perf. Aspect (request) Imperf
(info-seek Q)
28
Discussion 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

29
politeness
  • Molodoj celovek,
  • young man
  • vy ne
  • you.PL NEG
  • budete zakryvat
  • will.2.PL to.close.IFV
  • okno?
  • window.ACC
  • (p .37)

30
Discussion 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)

32
politeness
  • Molodoj celovek,
  • young man
  • možet, vy
  • maybe you.PL
  • zakroete
  • will.close.PFV.2.PL
  • okno?
  • window.ACC
  • (p .000)

33
politeness
  • Molodoj celovek,
  • young man
  • zakrojte,
  • close.2.PL.IMP
  • požalujsta,
  • please
  • ?kno.
  • window.ACC
  • (p .17)

34
politeness
  • Molodoj celovek,
  • young man
  • zakrojte
  • close.2.PL.IMP
  • okno!
  • window.ACC
  • (p .045)

35
Discussion 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?)

36
Study 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)

37
Main 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

38
Main 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)

39
Situation 1 expression of IF (p .11)
40
Situation 1 syntactic form (p .73)
41
Situation 1 morpho-syntactic politeness
(p .05)
42
Situation 1 lexical politeness (p .045)
43
Whats 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

44
Whats 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)

45
HS 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

46
Whats 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.

47
Situation 1 orientation of request(p .007)
48
Situation 2 expression of illocutionary force
(p .96)
49
Situation 2 utterance type (p .2)
50
Situation 2 morpho-syntactic politeness (p .35)
51
Situation 2 lexical politeness (p .12)
52
Situation 2 orientation of request (p .17)
53
Pedagogical 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)

54
Next 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

55
Main 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
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