The Russian Verb under the Influence of German Language

Аннотация

This paper presents an analysis of changes in Russian verb usage under the influence of the German language. The goal of the study is to analyse the deviations in the usage of Russian verbal aspect and in Russian verbs of motion. The material for the study comes from a corpus of oral and written texts collected from adult speakers of Russian in Germany. The empirical data show a number of changes in the use of Russian verb: uncertainty using verbal prefixes; an increase of analytical forms; no secondary imperfectivisation; a significant preference for perfective forms in the class of accomplishments (according to Vendler’s verb classification) and replacement of multidirectional verbs of motion with unidirectional verbs. Though the number of deviations is rather large, there is no lexicalization of aspect. At present we can speak only about the tendencies of language development, not the new Russian language norms in Germany. Concluding, the results of the study will be compared with the research of Russian verb usage in the USA.