Grammatical mistakes

[John Lyles]

My Russian girlfriend's 8-year-old sister, growing up in a Russian-speaking
house in the States, one day said, мы хочем (my xochem).  I imagine this is
a common mistake children (and our students) make.

There is an article by  Magdalena Smoczyńska, “The Acquisition of Polish,”
appearing in *The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition: Volume 1:
The Data *in which she discusses some difficulties in Russian that delays
language acquisition in Russian children.  Here's a quote I have at hand: “Two
apparently minor factors appear to cause a considerable delay in Russian
acquisition.  First, the fact that the Russian unstressed *o* is pronounced
as *a*; and second, the existence of diminutive masculine forms which end in
–*a* and are declined like feminine nouns, e.g. *miskha/myedvyed*
‘bear’, *zayka/zayats
*‘hare’, and, very frequently, boys’ first names such as *Zhenya*, *Sasha*,
*Koyla*.  These two apparently minor facts seem to be the cause of the whole
confusion.”

John Lyles



2011/10/18 John Schillinger <jschill at american.edu>

> How about Russian children?  For example, do they make grammatical mistakes
> in verb endings by analogy with familiar
> patterns, as do our young grandchildren, such as "I goed" (I went), or "I
> buyed a toy,or  "I wakeded up my brother?"
>
>
>
> John Schillinger
> Emeritus Prof. of Russian
> American University
>
>
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