Semantic Categorization of Placement Verbs in L1 and L2 Danish and Spanish

Abstract

This study investigates sematic categorization of the meaning of placement verbs by Danish and Spanish native speakers and two groups of intermediate second language (L2) learners (Danish learners of L2 Spanish and Spanish learners of L2 Danish). Participants described 31 video clips picturing different types of placement events. Cluster analyses revealed considerable differences in the semantic categorization of these events in Danish and Spanish as well as learning difficulties for the two learner groups. When Danish and Spanish differ in the number and nature of semantic distinctions, L2 verb meaning reconstruction becomes challenging when moving from a more to a less complex system and vice versa. Both learner groups used noncaused motion verbs, overgeneralized given placement verbs, and tended to use L2 verbs haphazardly.

The role of force dynamics and intentionality in the reconstruction of L2 verb meanings

“…Similar results are obtained if we include the whole set of 31 video stimuli (see Cadierno et al, 2016). For this analysis, which includes a larger set of videoclips, we calculated the Simpson's Diversity Index for the four participant groups.…”

“…These data reveal that the semantic information for these two groups of native speakers in this type of placement events is totally different. In fact, in a previous study on Spanish and Danish placement events, Cadierno et al (2016) showed that these scenes are categorized differently by speakers of Danish and Spanish. This was shown by means of a hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis with Euclidian distance and Ward linkage.…”

“…The ease or difficulty of the learner's reconstruction process can be affected by the number and generality of the categories involved in each language. Previous research into the L2 expression of placement events has shown that it is difficult for learners to move not only from a general system to a more specific system (e.g., Viberg, 1998;Gullberg, 2009) but also from a more specific system into a general one (Cadierno, Ibarretxe-Antuñano, & Hijazo-Gascón, 2016).…”

English and Chinese children’s motion event similarity judgments

“…Most studies on space, language and cognition tend to focus on motion events (as compared to situations of static location), in particular, self-instigated voluntary or spontaneous motion events (see, for instance, Allen et al 2007;Berman and Slobin 1994;Bowerman and Choi 2001;Hickmann 2006;Hohenstein 2005;Slobin 2004). There is a growing body of literature focusing on a more complex type of events involving causality, viz., caused motion events, but most of these studies do not test the linguistic relativity hypothesis directly (see, for instance, Berthele 2015; Cadierno et al 2016;Filipović 2013;Gullberg 2011;Gullberg and Narasimhan 2010;Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2012;Kopecka and Narasimhan 2012;Wolff 2003). In this context, the present study explores how English and Chinese 1 speakers judge the similarity between caused motion scenes, which encompass a set of particularly rich components such as Path of motion, causing action and different types of Manner information.…”

“…As far as caused motion events are concerned, previous studies explore varied issues such as how the concept of causation is related to the linguistic structure (e.g., direct causation event is more frequently encoded in simplex sentences rather than in periphrastic structures; see Wolff 2003 for details), how the semantics of placement verbs in typologically different languages affects speakers' linguistic construal of placement events (e.g., Cadierno et al 2016;Gullberg 2011;Gullberg and Narasimham 2010;Kopecka and Narasimhan 2012; to name a few), and how language-specific properties influence the semantic density of caused motion descriptions of children from different languages (e.g., Ji et al 2011c). Most of these studies suggest that language-specific factors have a larger role to play in event conceptualization than previously assumed.…”