Learning verbs of movement in a Foreign Language: Spanish students of English in a formal context

Abstract

<p><em>Native speakers of different languages may conflate reality in different ways. One of the most illustrative examples of this idea is movement and the divergences in its lexicalization on the part of the native speakers of English and Spanish. The present study focuses on the lexicalization of motion events in the learners’ interlanguage. We compare the use of Path and Manner verbs in two groups of native speakers of Spanish studying English at elementary and advanced levels. The way movement was conflated by the advanced group was reasonably close to the English way, whereas the elementary group was still far from the English lexicalization of movement. These results support the language-based theories on cognition as they show that differences of L2 proficiency may have an influence in the way motion is lexicalized in the L2.</em></p><br /

The roles of language mode and dominance in French–German bilinguals’ motion event descriptions

“…Bidirectional transfer patterns modulated by an age factor are reported in Hohenstein et al’s (2006) study where bilingual L1 Spanish - L2 English speakers used fewer path verbs than monolingual Spanish speakers, but the L2-effect was stronger for early bilinguals. On the one hand, the influence of the verb-framed pattern in terms of an increasing use of path verbs in the S-language has been found in several studies (Alcaraz Mármol, 2013; Brown & Gullberg, 2013; Hohenstein et al, 2006). On the other hand, Goschler et al (2013) do not find any difference in path verbs between bilingual Turkish–German speakers and monolingual German speakers.…”

“…While findings show that proficient V-language speakers usually do not use manner verbs in these contexts (Cadierno & Lund, 2004), other scholars note that even at advanced levels, learners frequently use verbs encoding manner of motion (Larrañaga et al, 2011; Treffers-Daller & Tidball, 2015). However, difficulties in terms of manner verb use by learners of an S-language have been reported in several studies (Alcaraz Mármol, 2013; Alonso, 2011, 2013, 2016; Antonijević & Berthaud, 2009; Bauer, 2010; Brown & Gullberg, 2008; Cadierno, 2010; Carroll, Weimar, Flecken, Lambert & von Stutterheim, 2012; Hohenstein et al, 2006; Reshöft, 2011).…”