Spontaneous Motion in L1- and L2-English Speech: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

Spontaneous motion is one of the most basic event types, but different languages use varying patterns to express it. For example, English usually encodes path information in prepositional phrases or adverbial particles, while Korean maps path information onto verbs (Talmy, 1985). This study predicts that this typological difference would affect English spontaneous motion expressions produced by Korean learners and analyzes two English-language speech corpora, one, the data from native speakers (600 recordings), and the other, data from L1-Korean learners of English (400 recordings). It finds that the learners significantly underuse satellite-framed patterns, but not verb-framed patterns, compared with the native speakers, suggesting that the L1 plays a role in their L2 production. The satellite-framed patterns, however, account for the greatest portion of spontaneous motion expressions in the L2 corpus, suggesting the dominant effect of input on L2 production. These findings lead to pedagogical implications concerning preventing L1 interference and fostering input-based L2 acquisition.