THE SPECIFICITY OF EVENT EXPRESSION IN FIRST LANGUAGE INFLUENCES EXPRESSION OF OBJECT PLACEMENT EVENTS IN SECOND LANGUAGE

Wojciech Lewandowski,Şeyda Özçalışkan

doi:10.1017/s0272263121000048

Wojciech Lewandowski, Şeyda Özçalışkan

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263121000048

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Abstract

AbstractSpeakers show cross-linguistic differences in expressing placement events involving support (cup on table) and containment (apple in bowl) in first language (L1) contexts. They rely on either more-general (e.g., Spanish for support, Polish for containment) or more-specific (e.g., German, Polish for support; Spanish, German for containment) descriptions. Relatively less is known about the expression of placement events in second language (L2) production contexts. In this study, we examined object-placement event descriptions produced by two groups of L1 Polish speakers—with either German or Spanish as their L2—in comparison to monolingual speakers of German, Spanish, and Polish, using an animated event description task. Bilingual speakers showed greater effect of L1 patterns in moving from a more-general to a more-specific system and L2 patterns in moving from a more-specific to a more-general or between two more-specific systems, suggesting that the specificity of event expression in L1 influences patterns of placement expression in L2.

Highlights

Speakers show systematic cross-linguistic differences in their expression of objectplacement events (Bowerman, 1996; Narasimhan et al, 2012)
We asked whether bilingual speakers’ expression of placement events in their L2 transitions: Polish (L1)–German (L2), when transitioning to an L2 with a similar versus a different categorization system, follows the expression of such events produced by native speakers of the L2 (i.e., German or Spanish) or, alternatively, resemble the L1 (i.e., Polish) patterns
Polish (L1)–Spanish (L2) bilinguals, who were moving from a more-specific L1 to a more-general L2 system, showed greater use of more-general placement descriptions—a pattern akin to monolingual speakers of L1 Spanish

Summary

Introduction

Speakers show systematic cross-linguistic differences in their expression of objectplacement events (Bowerman, 1996; Narasimhan et al, 2012). In the case of containment relations, speakers of one set of languages (e.g., German, Spanish) express more-specific distinctions conveying the relative fit of placed objects, while speakers of other languages (e.g., English, Polish) rely on more-general descriptions that do not specify the particular fit of placed objects (see papers in Kopecka & Narasimhan, 2012). The few existing studies, all with adult bilingual speakers learning an L2 that encodes support or containment relations in opposite ways than their L1 (more-specific vs more-general), provided mixed results in the achievement of target-like L2 patterns in the expression of object placement events in L2 (Cadierno et al, 2016; Gullberg, 2009; Viberg, 1998). We asked whether bilinguals would show the same pattern of similarities and differences in their expression of placement events when speaking an L2 that encodes object placement events in similar or different ways, all in comparison to monolinguals in each of the three languages

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