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

Requests in the Speech of Adult Heritage and Native

Speakers of Russian

Irina [email protected]

Bryn Mawr College & Brandeis University

Special thanks

Dr. Sophia Malamud (coding production data and contributing to the analysis discussion)

Anna Slavina (technical support)

Requests: speech act universalsWhen 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)

- S’s wish or want that H do A- H’s ability to do A- H’s desire or willingness to do A- H doing A

Requests: English vs. RussianEnglish prefers H’s ability to perform A

Russian prefers either H’s ability OR H doing A (perfective future).

- Ty ne mozhesh/ne mog by podbrosit’ men’a 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 men’a do doma? You.SG NEG give.lift.PFV.2.SG me.ACC to home

- Will you give me a lift home?

Requests: English vs. RussianMorpho-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?

Requests: English vs. RussianLexical means of marking politeness:

English often inserts “please” even in interrogativesRussian 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?

Requests: English vs. RussianOrientation 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?

Russian specificsMožno – 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 vz’at’ 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 vz’at’ vašu knigu? Psbl.imp please to.take.PFV your.PL.ACC book.ACC

Russian specificsS 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 H’s 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 QnYou.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’?)

Russian specificsRussian has a larger repertoire than English

to make conventionally polite indirect requests in terms of:

Utterance content (questioning H’s ability & questioning H doing A)

Morpho-syntactic means of marking politeness (NEG, SBJV & interrogative particle*)

Present studyNo 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”)

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?

Participants

Participants: heritage speakersAll 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)

Participants: heritage speakersNative 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 = 26in English – 148 wpm (min - 76; max- 198), SD = 29

Average speech rate of native Russian speaker – 105 (Polynsky and Kagan, 2007)

Study design: comprehensionWritten 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) requestsconventionally 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

Study design: comprehensionDirectness:

This is a direct straightforward request.This doesn’t look like a typical request, but

I’d still take it as a request.I don’t recognize this phrase as a request.

Politeness:This request is very rude, rude, impolite,

slightly impolite, polite, too polite

Main results: comprehensionHS 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).

“Molodoj čelovek, young man

vy ne you.PL NEG

zakroete will.close.PFV.2.PL

okno?”window.ACC(p = .44)


vy ne you.PL NEG



politeness


oknowindow.ACC

vy ne you.PL NEG

zakroete?” will.close.PFV.2.P

L(p = .39)

“Molodoj čelovek, young manoknowindow.ACCvy ne you.PL NEGzakroete?” will.close.PFV.2.PL

(p = .000)

politeness

VO order vs OV order

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)


vy ne you.PL NEG




vy ne you.PL NEG

budete zakryvat’ will.2.PL

to.close.IPFV

okno?”window.ACC

(p = .005)

Perf. Aspect (request) Imperf (info-seek Q*)

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


vy ne you.PL NEG

budete zakryvat’ will.2.PL to.close.IFV

okno?”window.ACC

(p = .37)

politeness

Discussion: comprehension HS seem to transfer English politeness strategies

onto Russian structures and are not attentive to details:

1. možet - part of modal operator (3 SG)možete – inflected form matching the subject (2 PL)

2. HS are not familiar with punctuation rules and may

ignore comas and hence the suggested intonation

2. HS are not bothered by the lack of conventionalized morpho-syntactic politeness markers in Russian, such as the antithetical particle or the subjunctive.


možet, vy maybe you.PL


okno?”window.ACC

(p = .003)

“Molodoj čelovek, young manmožet, vy maybe you.PLzakroete will.close.PFV.2.PL okno?”window.ACC

(p = .000)

politeness

politeness“Molodoj čelovek, young man

zakrojte,close.2.PL.IMP

požalujsta, please

оkno.”window.ACC

(p = .17)

politeness


zakrojte close.2.PL.IMP

okno!”window.ACC

(p = .045)

Discussion: comprehensionHS 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?)

Study Design: Production2 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)

Main results: production

HS seem to have an impoverished repertoire of strategies to make indirect polite requests in Russian bothin types of utterances and morpho-syntactic means of

politeness

Main results: production (cont’d) HS compensate by

1. Relying almost exclusively on lexical politeness marker, producing combinations which sound “strange” to NS (možno požalujsta)

2. Over-using modal možno.

3. Relying on morpho-syntactic politeness strategies from English, e.g. embedded interrogative under performative (transfer)

Situation 1: expression of IF (p = .11)

Situation 1: syntactic form (p = .73)

Situation 1: morpho-syntactic politeness (p = .05)

Situation 1: lexical politeness (p = .045)

What’s 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

What’s going on?

HS also overuse the impersonal modal možno - using it either by itself or in combination with “please” (65% total). The latter doesn’t 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)

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

What’s going on?Since one of the interpretations of možno (especially

when it’s 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 isn’t enough socialization in different contexts (where one would need to ask for favor), HS don’t understand the difference between the inflected and impersonal modals.

OR American socialization suppresses Russian communicative norms in favor of English norms.

Situation 1: orientation of request(p = .007)

Situation 2: expression of illocutionary force (p = .96)

Situation 2: utterance type (p = .2)

Situation 2: morpho-syntactic politeness (p = .35)

Situation 2: lexical politeness (p = .12)

Situation 2: orientation of request (p = .17)

Pedagogical implicationsHS 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

strategiesExplicit comparisons of requestive strategies and

politeness markers in dominant and HLInteractive communicative assignments with

modeling (to practice native-like strategies for various speech acts)

Next stepsCHILDES: check for occurrence of možno in

input and outputCheck NS for occurrence of možno požalujsta

(followed by noun or by verb?)Frequency of different strategies – what’s

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

Main results: production (cont’d)

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)

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

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

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