Motion in Danish as a Second Language: Does the Learner's L1 Make a Difference?

TERESA CADIERNO

Introduction

The linguistic relativity hypothesis, that is, the possibility that language can influence thought, has constituted an important part of Western intellectual and philosophical discussions over the centuries (see Gumperz & Levinson, 1996; Lucy, 1992a, for some historical background on the hypothesis). The hypothesis, however, is best associated with the work of Benjamin Whorf (1956), whose ideas can be traced back to Sapir and Boas, as well as to the German linguist and philosopher von Humboldt. Even though the hypothesis fell into disfavor in the 1960s with the predominant view in linguistics of language as separate from cognition, and the emphasis in cognitive psychology on the universality of human conceptual structures, the last decade and a half has witnessed a renewed interest in this important issue, as evidenced by the methodologically rigorous empirical work developed by Lucy (1992a, 1992b) and the influential volumes edited by Gumperz and Levinson (1996) and Gentner and Goldin-Meadow (2003).

One important outcome of this renewed interest in the linguistic relativity hypothesis has been Slobin's (1996a) thinking-for-speaking hypothesis, which focuses on the influence of language on the kind of thinking that goes on, online, while we are using the language. According to this hypothesis, the language that we speak directs our attention, while speaking, to particular ways of filtering our experiences of the world. In other words, our experiences of the world are filtered into verbalized events not only through the choice of the individual speaker's perspective, but critically through the particular set of options provided by the language that we speak as well. Thinking for speaking thus entails 'picking those characteristics of objects and events that (a) fit some conceptualization of the event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language' (Slobin, 1996a: 76).

Slobin's thinking-for-speaking hypothesis has received empirical support in research showing that native speakers (NSs) of typologically different languages (Talmy, 1985,1991, 2000b) tend to pay different kinds of attention to particular details of motion events when talking about them (e.g. Berman & Slobin, 1994; Slobin, 1996a, 1996b, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2006). This empirical research as well as Slobin's thinking-for-speaking hypothesis have important implications for second language acquisition. Under such a perspective, learning another language entails learning another way of thinking for speaking (Cadierno & Lund, 2004; Han, 1998, 2004, 2008; Stam, 1998), a hypothesis that has been investigated in a number of studies on how adult L2 learners with typologically different L1s and L2s come to talk about motion in an L2 (see Cadierno, 2008; Stam, this volume, for a detailed review). The present chapter contributes to this line of inquiry by reporting an investigation that takes into account both inter- and intra-typological differences between the learners' L1 and L2 with respect to (a) the description of one particular type of motion event, namely motion events involving boundary-crossing situations, and (b) the productive and receptive vocabulary of L2 motion verbs, in general, and of manner-of-motion verbs, in particular, of the L2 learners examined.

Thinking for Speaking and the L1 Expression of Motion Events

Empirical research into the expression of motion in L1 acquisition and use has been inspired by Talmy's (1985, 1991, 2000b) typological work, which describes the characteristic lexicalization patterns involved in the expression of motion events in different languages of the world. In satellite-framed languages (S-languages), such as Chinese and all branches of the Indo-European languages except Romance languages, the core schema of a motion event, that is the Path, is characteristically coded in a satellite, whereas Motion and Manner are expressed in the verb root. In verb-framed languages (V-languages), on the other hand, Motion and Path are typically expressed in the verb, whereas Manner and Cause tend to be coded in a separate constituent such as an adverbial or a gerund. This pattern is characteristic of Romance, Semitic and Polynesian languages. The following English and Spanish examples taken from Talmy (1985) illustrate the contrast between the two types of languages: The bottle floated into the cave versus La botella entró a la cueva flotando ('The bottle entered the cave floating').

However, in order to fully account for the lexicalization patterns of the two types of language, we need to take into account the so-called boundary-crossing constraint (Aske, 1989; Slobin & Hoiting, 1994), that is whether or not a Path involves the crossing of a spatial boundary (motion into/out of/over a bounded region). Thus, whereas in S-languages the conflation of Motion and Manner into the main verb is possible in both boundary and non-boundary-crossing situations (e.g. Mary ran into the house [+boundary-crossing]; Mary ran up to the house [-boundary-crossing]), in V-languages this conflation is only possible in non-boundary-crossing contexts (e.g. María corrió hasta la casa 'Mary ran up to the house' [without entering]). In boundary-crossing situations, Manner must be expressed in a separate constituent (e.g. María entró a la casa corriendo 'Mary entered the house running'). This is due to the fact that in these languages '... crossing a spatial boundary is conceived of as a change of state, and (that) state changes require an independent predicate ...' (Slobin, 1997: 441). In V-languages, a change of state is marked by means of path verbs such as the Spanish verbs entrar 'enter', salir 'exit', subir 'go up' and bajar 'go down'. The only exception to this pattern is verbs that express high-energy motor patterns such as the equivalents of English throw oneself and plunge, which are more likely conceived of as punctual and instantaneous acts than as activities extended in time (Slobin, 2004). Given the particular force dynamics encoded in this type of verbs, sudden boundary-crossing situations such as 'plunging into a swimming pool' can then be conceptualized as changes of states, a conceptualization that...