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Viliam_Bur comments on Open Thread for February 11 - 17 - Less Wrong Discussion
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You may easily know more about this issue than me, because I haven't actually researched this.
That said, let's be more precise. If we're talking about mere fluency, there is, of course, no question.
But if we're talking about actually native-equivalent competence and performance, I have severe doubts that this is even regularly achieved. How many L2 speakers of English do you know who never, ever pick an unnatural choice from among the myriad of different ways in which the future can be expressed in English? This is something that is completely effortless for native speakers, but very hard for L2 speakers.
The people I know who are candidates for that level of proficiency in an L2 are at the upper end of the intelligence spectrum, and I also know a non-dumb person who has lived in a German-speaking country for decades and still uses wrong plural formations. Hell, there's people who are employed and teach at MIT and so are presumably non-dumb who say things like "how it sounds like".
The two things I mentioned are semantic/pragmatic, not syntactic. I know there is a study that shows L2 learners don't have much of a problem with the morphosyntax of Russian aspect, and that doesn't surprise me very much. I don't know and didn't find any work that tried to test native-like performance on the semantic and pragmatic level.
I'm not sure how to answer the "why" question. Why should there be a critical period for anything? ... Intuitively, I find that semantics/pragmatics, having to do with categorisation, is a better candidate for something critical-period-like than pure (morpho)syntax. I'm not even sure you need critical periods for everything, anyway. If A learns to play the piano starting at age 5 and B starts at age 35, I wouldn't be surprised if A is not only on average, but almost always, better at age 25 than B is at 55. Unfortunately, that's basically impossible to study while controlling for all confounders like general intelligence, quality of instruction, and number of hours spent on practice. (The piano example would be analogous more to the performance than the competence aspect of language, I suppose.)
There is a study about Russian dative subjects that suggests even highly advanced L2 speakers with lots of exposure don't get things quite right. Admittedly, you can still complain that they don't separate the people who have lived in a Russian-speaking country for only a couple of months from those who have lived there for a decade.
The thing about the subjunctive is, at best, wrong, but certainly not bullshit. The fact that it was told to me by a very intelligent French linguist about a friend of his whose L2-French is flawless except for occasional errors in that domain is better evidence for that being a very hard thing to acquire than your "bullshit" is against that.
Bonus points for giving a specific example, which helped me to understand your point, and at this moment I fully agree with you. Because I understand the example; my own language has something similar, and wouldn't expect a stranger to use this correctly. The reason is that it would be too much work to learn properly, for too little benefit. It's a different way to say things, and you only achieve a small difference in meaning. And even if you asked a non-linguist native, they would probably find it difficult to explain the difference properly. So you have little chance to learn it right, and also little motivation to do.
Here is my attempt to explain the examples from the link, pages 3 and 4. (I am not a Russian language speaker, but my native language is also Slavic, and I learned Russian. If I got something wrong, please correct me.)
"ya uslyshala ..." = "I heard ..."
"mne poslyshalis ..." = "to-me happened-to-be-heard ..."
"ya xotel ..." = "I wanted ..."
"mne xotelos ..." = "to-me happened-to-want ..."
That's pretty much the same meaning, it's just that the first variant is "more agenty", and the second variant is "less agenty", to use the LW lingo. But that's kinda difficult to explain explicitly, becase... you know, how exactly can "hearing" (not active listening, just hearing) be "agenty"; and how exactly can "wanting" be "non-agenty"? It doesn't seem to make much sense, until you think about it, right? (The "non-agenty wanting" is something like: my emotions made me to want. So I admit that I wanted, but at the same time I deny full responsibility for my wanting.)
As a stranger, what is the chance that (1) you will hear it explained in a way that will make sense to you, (2) you will remember it correctly, and (3) when the opportunity comes, you will remember to use it. Pretty much zero, I guess. Unless you decide to put an extra effort into this aspect of the langauge specifically. But considering the costs and benefits, you are extremely unlikely to do it, unless being a professional translator to Russian is extremely important for you. (Or unless you speak a Slavic language that has a similar concept, so the costs are lower for you, but even then you need a motivation to be very good at Russian.)
Now when you think about contexts, these kinds of words are likely to be used in stories, but don't appear in technical literature or official documents, etc. So if you are a Russian child, you heard them a lot. If you are a Russian-speaking foreigner working in Russia, there is a chance you will literally never hear it at the workplace.
The paper doesn't even find a statistically significant difference. The point estimate is that advanced L2 do worse than natives, but natives make almost as many mistakes.
They did found differences with the advances L2 speakers, but I guess we care about the highly advanced ones. They point out a difference at the bottom of page 18, though admittedly, it doesn't seem to be that much of a big deal and I don't know enough about statistics to tell whether it's very meaningful.
'mne poslyshalos' I think. This one has connotations of 'hearing things,' though.
Note: "Mne poslyshalis’ shagi na krishe." was the original example; I just removed the unchanging parts of the sentences.
Ah I see, yes you are right. That is the correct plural in this case. Sorry about that! 'Mne poslyshalos chtoto' ("something made itself heard by me") would be the singular, vs the plural above ("the steps on the roof made themselves heard by me."). Or at least I think it would be -- I might be losing my ear for Russian.