Motion Event Similarity Judgments in One or Two Languages: An Exploration of Monolingual Speakers of English and Chinese vs. L2 Learners of English.

Yinglin Ji

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00909

Abstract

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualize motion events, as suggested by behavioral evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was compared to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioral pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages.

Highlights

The main arguments of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, known as the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ (Whorf, 1956), focus on how properties of a given language influence the structure and content of thought, affecting the way that humans view reality
The present study is generally interested in two questions: (a) whether the effect of motion language typology can go beyond language performance, and influence motion conceptualisation of monolingual speakers; (b) whether, and how, the motion conceptualisation of L2 learners differs from that of monolinguals
The preferences of the participants were decided according to the specific key (A or L on the keyboard) they signaled while judging the similarity between motion screens

Summary

Introduction

The main arguments of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, known as the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ (Whorf, 1956), focus on how properties of a given language influence the structure and content of thought, affecting the way that humans view reality. The present study investigates how Chinese adult L2 learners of English at different proficiencies conceptualize complex motion events (i.e., caused motion involving path, causality and varied types of manner information) in a triads matching task Their performance is compared to that of Chinese and English monolingual speakers with the aim of shedding fresh light on the question of linguistic relativity recast in an L2 context: the extent to which non-verbal similarity judgments in relation to motion events in L2 learners are driven by the learner’s native language (i.e., Chinese), or whether they show signs of restructuring in terms of the target language (i.e., English)

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