How language type influences patterns of motion expression in bilingual speakers

Abstract

Expression of motion shows systematic inter-typological variability between language types, particularly with respect to manner and path components of motion: speakers of satellite-framed languages (S-language; e.g. German) frequently conflate manner and path into a single clause, while verb-framed language speakers (V-language; e.g. Spanish) typically express manner and path in separate clauses, a pattern that also becomes evident in bilinguals’ expression of motion events in each language type. However, less is known about intra-typological variability within each language type, particularly for the expression of motion events among bilingual speakers. In this study, we examine motion descriptions produced by two groups of bilinguals – with Polish as first language – learning a second language that belongs to the same (Polish–German) or a different language type (Polish–Spanish), in comparison to monolinguals in each language (German, Spanish, Polish). Our results, based on written descriptions of animated motion scenes, showed evidence for both inter-typological and intra-typological variation in the expression of motion, with greater attunement to first-language (L1) patterns in learning a language of the same type, and closer alignment to second-language (L2) patterns in learning a language that belongs to a different language type.

The Specificity of Event Expression in First Language Influences Expression of Object Placement Events in Second Language

“…Our results further confirmed these patterns for support relations in a different set of languages, and also extended them to be true for placement events involving containment relations. These findings also aligned closely with earlier work (e.g., Lewandowski & Özçalışkan, 2021) that examined patterns of voluntary motion expression among L2 speakers (e.g., running into house, crawling over a rug), who had to shift either from a more complex to a simpler versus from a simpler to a more complex system. This earlier work showed that the transition from more complex to less complex systems of motion expression facilitated closer attunement to the native patterns of the target language in L2 speakers, a pattern that was reversed for the shift in the opposite direction (see also Brown & Gullberg, 2008, 2011Cadierno, 2004Cadierno, , 2010Hendriks & Hickmann, 2015;Lewandowski, 2020, among others, for similar findings).…”

“…In some instances, the switch from an S-language L1 to a V-language L2 also resulted in errors in the lexicalization of motion, particularly in the expression of path outside the verb (e.g., Spanish L2 speakers using correr adentro "run inside" instead of entrar corriendo = "enter running"; Larrañaga et al, 2011;Muñoz & Cadierno, 2019). Importantly, however, L1 transfer effects were also mediated by proficiency level and the relative complexity of the event description system, with more target-like L2 productions when produced by advanced bilingual speakers (e.g., Cadierno & Ruiz, 2006;Özçalışkan, 2016) and when transitioning from a more-specific to a more-general system of expression (i.e., from S-to V-language; Lewandowski & Özçalışkan, 2021).…”

Temporal Expressions in English and Spanish: Influence of Typology and Metaphorical Construal

“…Additionally, other applications of this distinction are currently being explored, such as its effects on first language acquisition (Choi and Bowerman, 1991;Özçalışkan and Emerson, 2016), second language learning (Cadierno, 2017), and influence on bilingual speakers (Lewandowski and Özçalışkan, 2019).…”

Variable motion event encoding within languages and language types: a usage-based perspective

“…Similarly, languages from the same typological affiliation can differ in their ability to express Manner. For instance, previous findings suggest that, when talking about self-motion, German speakers tend to encode more specific Manner dimensions in the main verb than Polish speakers, who generally make use of a smaller variety and amount of manner verbs (Lewandowski & Mateu, 2016;Lewandowski & Özçalışkan, 2019). A similar pattern of differences has held true for other combinations of Slavic and Germanic languages such as, e.g., Polish vs. English (Kopecka, 2010;Slobin, Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Kopecka, & Majid, 2014), Serbo-Croatian vs. English (Filipović, 2007), and Russian and Polish vs. English, Dutch, and Swedish (Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Divjak, & Rakhilina, 2010), with Germanic languages consistently showing a higher degree of Manner salience compared to Slavic languages; see also Ragnarsdóttir and Strömqvist (2004) for an intra-genetic comparison of Manner encoding between Icelandic and Swedish, i.e., within the Germanic group.…”

“…In addition, the most common speech production tasks consisted of descriptions of motion scenes in which subjects were not faced with strict time limits while elicitation methods that involved the added pressure of time constraints were used rarely (but see Pourcel, 2005, for an exception). To be more specific, in previous experiments, in which the elicitation stimuli were either pictures (e.g., Berman & Slobin, 1994;Cadierno, 2010;Özçalışkan, 2015;Strömqvist & Verhoeven, 2004) or video clips (e.g., Hendriks & Hickmann, 2015;Lewandowski & Özçalışkan, 2019;Stam, 2006), experimenters allowed the subjects to provide a motion event description in an unhurried manner after visualization. If the stimuli consisted of a series of isolated (decontextualized) scenes, participants were given time to describe each scene one at a time before proceeding to the next scene (e.g., Hendriks & Hickmann, 2015;Özçalışkan, 2015).…”