Vorträge im Rahmen des Kolloquiums Slawistische Linguistik
Im Sommersemester 2026 findet das Kolloquium donnerstags 16.15-17:45 (in Präsenz/hybrid) oder um 17:00-18:30 (zoom) statt (Präsenz: Dorotheenstr. 65, Raum 5.61).
Wer an den Vorträgen teilnehmen möchte und den Zoomlink benötigt (für Präsenz/Hybridvorträge kommen Sie einfach vorbei) oder selber vortragen möchte, wendet sich bitte an Berit Gehrke.
23.4.2026, 17:00-18:30 [zoom]
Victoriya Trubnikova (Verona): Prefixed Verbs and Morphological Awareness in Heritage Russian: Evidence from Bilingual Children in Italy
The present study contributes to the research on Russian as a Heritage Language (HL) in the Italian context. While error analysis of heritage speakers’ production (Perotto 2019) informs acquisition studies by highlighting deviations from the standard, recent research promotes a view of heritage language as a specific language variety (Rakhilina et al. 2016; Kisselev et al. 2024; Kopotev et al. 2024). This approach restores agency to non balanced bilinguals by focusing on the metalinguistic knowledge and compensation strategies that HL speakers activate when producing non-standard linguistic forms.This case study aims to provide evidence on morphological awareness of prefixed verbs in Russian language. Our research focuses on inchoative (pet’ 'sing' / za-pet’ 'begin to sing') and delimitative (pet’ 'sing' / po-pet’ 'sing for a little while') perfectives of atelic verbs. According to our hypothesis, the choice of prefix is challenging both for non-native and HL speakers due to 1) the process of perfectivization in verbs denoting activities; 2) the interplay between aspectual morphology and contextually driven semantics; 3) optionality of prefix use, which leads to the employment of lexical strategies.We examine both production and comprehension skills of bilingual children residing in Italy with regard to the use of prefixed verbs expressing activities bounded in time. Based on existing research on aspect acquisition, we expect a reduced use of complex perfectives in production, however, it is yet to be determined whether children will encounter difficulties in interpretation.To test our hypothesis, we recruited 40 bilingual children aged 7-13 with Italian as their dominant language, enrolled in three private Russian language maintenance schools. First, in a pilot study between April and May 2025, we collected elicited narratives based on cartoon clips that the participants and control group saw prior to recording. In the corpus of 10 audio registrations we observed an absence of inchoatives and delimitatives if compared to native speaker data. Second, we performed an Acceptability Judgement Task with target prefixed verbs in grammatical and non grammatical phrases while expanding our production dataset. The data collection was concluded in November 2025. The triangulation of production and comprehension results will allow us to assess the operationalization of metalinguistic knowledge (Elder et al. 1999).The findings of this research will contribute to a better understanding on the acquisitional path of HL speakers of Russian, informing course designers and language teachers about the potential for morphological creativity.Russian feminitive formation comes in two varieties: the feminitive suffix can be added to the masculine stem (e.g., artist/artistka ‘performer.M/F’) or the masculine and the feminine nouns can bear equipollent marking (e.g., aktʲor/aktrisa ‘actor/actress’). Strikingly, the same holds for nouns derived with native Russian suffixes and may involve the same productive feminitive suffix (e.g., učítelʲ/učítelʲnica ‘teacher.M/F’ vs. provodnik/provodnica ‘conductor.M/F’).
I will examine the two types of feminitive formation in the context of complex affix formation and argue that the affixal complex ‑nic‑ should synchronically involve the adjective-forming suffix ‑ĭn‑ and the diminutive/feminitive suffix ‑ic‑ in more than one mode of composition.
The grammatical status of clitics in monolingual and bilingual grammars remains contested: are they governed primarily by morphosyntax, or do prosodic requirements play a constitutive role in their distribution? Bulgarian offers a particularly informative test case, since its clitics are syntactically licensed but must also satisfy the Tobler–Mussafia law — an instantiation of the more general Strong Start constraint that prevents clitics from appearing in absolute clause-initial position. The interaction of these pressures makes Bulgarian clitic placement a sensitive diagnostic for evaluating the relative weight of prosody and morphosyntax in grammar.
We argue that bilingual data provide a uniquely powerful lens on this issue, since reduced or divergent input and cross-linguistic pressure can decouple components of the grammar that travel together in monolingual development. Tracing clitic placement across the lifespan in monolingual and heritage Bulgarian, we first draw on CHILDES corpora to identify three major stages in monolingual acquisition, with adult-like syntax–prosody mapping established by approximately age three. We then compare these patterns with production data from heritage children (aged 4;0–7;0) and experimental evidence from clitic comprehension in heritage adults, both groups residing in the United States.
The results reveal an intriguing asymmetry: heritage children show robust, largely target-like sensitivity to syntactic and prosodic constraints, while heritage adults exhibit reduced syntax–prosody integration and overgeneralize Strong Start beyond its target domain. These findings suggest that core prosodic requirements are successfully acquired in childhood but may later undergo attrition-driven reanalysis. We evaluate this pattern against three families of analyses: purely syntactic accounts, prosodic-inversion accounts, and DM accounts, in which clitic placement is derived through post-syntactic operations sensitive to prosodic well-formedness. The heritage-adult profile — where Strong Start remains productive but becomes unmoored from its original licensing environment — is difficult to reconcile either with a narrowly syntactic account or with a single PF-repair operation. Instead, it points toward an architecture in which prosodic constraints are represented at a post-syntactic level where they may reorganize independently under attrition. More broadly, heritage grammars emerge as a productive testing ground for theoretical questions about grammatical architecture that monolingual data alone cannot easily resolve.
11.6.2026, 17:00-18:30 [zoom]
Veronika Makarova (University of Saskatchewan): Doukhobors: the Rebel Minority and their Language Endangerment
This presentation focuses on the language and culture of the minority group of Canadian Doukhobors. It begins with a brief overview of the history and culture of Canadian Doukhobors, followed by a discussion of the distinctive features of their language, the causes of its endangerment, and ongoing revitalization efforts.
Doukhobors are a Christian religious dissenting group that originated in the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century. Because of their rejection of the Orthodox Church and refusal to perform military service, they faced persecution in Russia, prompting approximately 7,500 Doukhobors to immigrate to Canada in 1899. Their pacifism, communal farming practices, and efforts to defend their rights also led to discrimination and stigmatization in Canada. As a result of sustained marginalization and demographic decline, both their culture and language are now severely endangered.
Doukhobor Russian, currently still spoken by approximately 200 Doukhobors in their seventies to nineties, originated from Central and Southwestern Russian dialects of the nineteenth century. In twentieth-century Canada, prolonged isolation from other Russian-speaking populations and extensive contact with English led to the development of a unique language variety with distinctive phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic features. Examples of these include /gh/–/x/–/g/ alternations, layers of dialectal, archaic, and borrowed English vocabulary, and the erosion of the neuter gender system.
The presentation concludes with a discussion of language maintenance and revitalization in the context of near-extinct languages. An online free community Russian language course offered by the author to Doukhobor learners is described.
Maria Onoeva (HU Berlin/Prag) & Mariia Razguliaeva (ZAS Berlin): Polar questions in Russian (part II): From experimental perspectives to findings
Vorträge in zurückliegenden Semestern
WiSe 2025/26 * SoSe 2025 * WiSe 2024/25 * SoSe 2024 * WiSe 2023/24 * SoSe 2023 * WiSe 2022/23 * SoSe 2022 * WiSe 2021/22 * SoSe 2021 * WiSe 2020/21 * SoSe 2020 entfiel (COVID-19) * WiSe 2019/20 * SoSe 2019 * WS 2018/19 * SoSe 2018 * WS 2017/18 * SoSe 2017 * WS 2016/17 * SoSe 2016 * WS 2015/16 * SoSe 2015 * WS 2014/15 * SoSe 2014 * WS 2013/14