?Can Motion Event Construal Be Taught or Restructures? Evidence from Bilinguals and L2 Learners?

PARÍS, LUIS; TABULLO, ÁNGEL; CELI, MARÍA ALEJANDRA

Workshop; CAN MOTION EVENT CONSTRUAL BE TAUGHT OR RESTRUCTURED? EVIDENCE FROM BILINGUALS AND L2 LEARNERS; 2021

University of reading

The Spanish-English contrast presents some difficulties in L2 learning, which seems to rely onthe simple event construction of each language. As Spanish is an instance of verb-framedlanguages (Talmy, 2000), the verb tends to codify result, whereas English is an instance ofsatellite-framed languages in which the verb tends to codify manner. If result needs to becodified, English resorts to the English Resultative Construction (ERC), a double predicateconstruction with a PP that codifies change of location in Path-ERC(1) Bill walked into the roomor with an AP that codifies change of state in Property-ERC:(2) Mary danced Peter tiredIn addition, Fake Reflexive-ERC codify either change of location (PP) or state (AP) as in:(3) The baby cried himself asleepERC has no mirror equivalent in Spanish for all its subtypes. Yet, Spanish and English share adouble predicate structure, the Depictive Construction (DC), that does not codify result:(4) He returned the book damaged(5) El devolvió el libro dañadoTherefore, we wonder to what extent the different ERC are learned by Spanish nativespeakers who learn English as L2 (EFL). We aim at identifying i) if the different subtypes ofERC are learned in a given sequence; and ii) if this sequence occurs, to identify if it ismodulated by the structure?s departure from the Spanish pattern and proficiency level. Weconducted an online Sentence Comprehension Task designed to measure the interpretationof the three types of ERC and the DC by native speakers of Spanish with different levels ofEFL. Results indicate that: i) DC are more easily comprehended due to L1 influence on L2; ii)the comprehension of Path-ERC show no significant difference with the DC; iii) proficiencyimproves the comprehension of all ERC, but this effect interacts with type of ERC (Path >Property >Fake Reflexive).References:Talmy, Leonard (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics, vol. 2: Typology and processin conceptstructuring. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press