A Russian study of language acquisition has revealed that the first people to speak Russian were likely a group of young lovers who fell in love with one another.
The study also reveals how language was introduced in Russia during the 17th century and how the Russian language has evolved over time.
Dr Nikita Zhukov from the Institute of Russian Language Research at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Engineering says the study shows that language acquisition is a process that takes place over time and that there are many reasons for the spread of languages across the globe.
“There are many similarities among the languages that are spoken in different parts of the world, so they all have the same underlying biological process,” Dr Zhukova said.
“One of the reasons that we can find a lot of similarity among languages is that in each one there are the same three types of grammatical rules.”
So, in Russian, for example, there are two basic rules for expressing a noun and an adjective, and in English, there is a third type of rule which expresses a verb.
“Dr Zhukavs work with language experts at the National Institute of Education of Russian, Russian and Eastern European Languages and Literatures (NIELSL) has revealed a new way to study language.”
What we found is that we need to study languages because the way that we talk is important to us.
“Language is the way in which we communicate with one or more people.”
It’s important to understand the rules that are used in the language and understand how they are being used to express messages.
“If we want to understand how language spreads, then we need studies on language spread,” she said.
“Language has spread throughout history, and there is more of it than we think.”
The fact that we know that it spread over the course of the 17 centuries, is important for understanding how it spread in the past,” Dr Khakavs said.
She said the study has provided important data to understand why language is spreading in different places around the world.”
We have a good sense of what the language spread like.
“And we have this data to learn about how to manage the language.
So we know how to make sure that the language is not spreading,” Dr. Zhukovich said.