INSA GÜLZOW AND NATALIA GAGARINA ANALYTICAL AND SYNTHETIC VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH CHILD LANGUAGE * Abstract. This paper deals with the differences in the early acquisition of verb constructions by two L1 Russian-speaking and two L1 English-speaking children and compares the emergence of finite and non-finite verb forms in the first six months of early verb production. As an analysis of the early verb forms will show, large language-specific differences exist with regard to the amount of finite vs. non-finite verb forms in the children’s early productions although children acquiring either language display a preference for infinitival and/or other non-finite verb forms for a short period of time. Given the notable differences between Russian and English with regard to the richness of the inflectional system and the predominantly synthetic versus the predominantly analytical nature of Russian versus English verb constructions, the paper aims to show to what extent language-specific properties including the frequency of linguistic elements may contribute to the acquisition of different verbal constructions. 1. INTRODUCTION Children acquiring Russian, English and other languages such as French, German, Dutch or Danish behave similarly in that they show a preference for using infinitival or base forms 1 during early stages of language acquisition (e.g. Rizzi 1994, Wexler 1994, Hoekstra and Hyams 1998, Wijnen et al. 2001). With regard to the emergence of finite verb forms and paradigmatic contrasts, on the other hand, it has been argued that a rich inflectional system (with little syncretism) facilitates the acquisition of finite verb forms (cf. Bittner et al. 2003). For children acquiring languages with a rich inflectional verb morphology such as Russian, Finnish or Estonian, contrastive verb forms are documented soon after the onset of verb production (e.g. Kiebzak- Mandera et al. 1997, Gagarina 2003, Laalo 2000, Vihman and Vija, this volume) while paradigmatic contrasts in the verb productions of children acquiring languages with a poorer verb morphology like English or French are attested much later (e.g. Gülzow 2003, Kilani-Schoch et al. 1997). In this paper we discuss some of the issues that are raised by comparing the emergence of non-finite and finite verb forms in the language of children acquiring Russian or English. We address, particularly, the question of what the accuracy of the children’s use of finite verb forms (versus the inaccuracy of the children when producing verbal utterances with non-finite verb forms) can tell us about the relationship between the children’s input and language development. 229 N. Gagarina and I. Gülzow (eds.), The Acquisition of Verbs and their Grammar: The Effect of Particular Languages, 229–259. Springer. © 2008