Linguistic Relativity in SLA

Thinking for Speaking

ZhaoHong Han, Teresa Cadierno

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781847693990
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Crosslinguistic influence is an established area of second language research, and as such, it has been subject to extensive scrutiny. Although the field has come a long way in understanding its general character, many issues still remain a conundrum, for example, why does transfer appear selective, and why does transfer never seem to go away for certain linguistic elements? Unlike most existing studies, which have focused on transfer at the surface form level, the present volume examines the relationship between thought and language, in particular thought as shaped by first language development and use, and its interaction with second language use. The chapters in this collection conceptually explore and empirically investigate the relevance of Slobin's Thinking-for-Speaking Hypothesis to adult second language acquisition, offering compelling and enlightening evidence of the fundamental nature of crosslinguistic influence in adult second language acquisition.

Chapter 1

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).¹ 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 would license the possibility of using manner verbs in V-languages. The following Spanish example illustrates this possibility: El niño se sumergió en la piscina ‘The child plunged into the swimming-pool’. It is important to mention, however, that in a language like Spanish the possibility of using manner-of-motion verbs in sudden boundary-crossing events is also dependent on factors such as the type of ground that is described (e.g. whether it is three dimensional or not) and the speaker”s background knowledge of the motion event at hand (Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, personal communication).

Crosslinguistic research into the expression of motion events in different languages (e.g. Berman & Slobin, 1994; Slobin, 1996a, 1996b, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2006) has shown systematic differences in how NSs from S- and V-languages talk about motion. Speakers of S-languages tend to provide more elaborated and tightly packaged descriptions of paths within a clause than speakers of V-languages, who, in turn, tend to provide descriptions of the static scene in which the movement takes place. Important differences have also been found with respect to manner of motion. Speakers of S-languages tend to provide more elaborated manner descriptions than speakers of V-languages, an elaboration that is reflected both in terms of the frequency with which manner information is supplied and in terms of the variety of manner distinctions made. Speakers of V-languages typically use neutral motion verbs to designate a creature”s normal way of moving, thus providing manner information only when this is communicatively important in a given context (Slobin, 2004). Furthermore, when describing motion events that involve boundary-crossing, speakers of V-languages often fail to provide manner information in a separate constituent unless, again, manner is somehow at issue. This is, according to Slobin (2004, 2006), due to language processing constraints, as the resulting construction would be syntactically heavy and would add processing load in terms of comprehension and production. Ease of processing is therefore an important factor to take into account when accounting for the use of simpler constructions over more complex ones by speakers of V-languages.

Özçalişkan (under review) attempted to overcome this tendency of V-speakers to leave out manner information by requiring speakers of Turkish – a V-language – as well as speakers of English – an S-language – to perform an experimental task that involved the description of a series of boundary-crossing motion events where both path and manner were presented as salient elements. The results of the study showed clear cross-linguistic differences with respect to the type of verbs, and the types of event segmentation employed by the two groups of NSs. Overall, NSs of English used manner verbs in their descriptions, whereas NSs of Turkish displayed a more varied pattern of verb use, which included a higher proportion of path verbs and path verbs with subordinate manner adjuncts. Manner verbs were also used by Turkish NSs, but, in agreement with Slobin”s (2004) claims, their use was restricted to descriptions of pictures that depicted punctual or instantaneous boundary-crossing events (e.g. diving into a pool of water, leaping over a hurdle.) With respect to event segmentation, English speakers predominantly described the boundary-crossing motion events in single clausal segments (e.g. he crawls into the house), whereas Turkish speakers tended to use multiple clausal segments, especially when describing stimuli that depicted temporally extended types of boundary-crossing events such as running into a house or crawling over a carpet. In this type of events, both manner and path information were included in the Turkish descriptions, but this was done in a sequential fashion: first by encoding manner as an activity towards a boundary, then marking the boundary-crossing with a path verb and, finally, describing manner again as an activity away from the boundary. The following English example illustrates this pattern of use: He crawls towards the carpet, and he crosses it, then he crawls away. According to Özçalişkan (under review), this result suggests that when manner is particularly salient, speakers of V-languages may employ elaborated types of expression that allow them to mention this component within the constraints of the semantic structure of their language.

In addition to inter-typological differences between speakers of S- and V-languages, important intra-typological distinctions within a given type of language have also been identified in crosslinguistic research. For example, studies by Özçalişkan and Slobin (1998), Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2004) and Engberg-Pedersen and Trondhjem (2004) have shown that speakers of three V-languages, Turkish, Basque and West-Greenlandic, provide more elaborated path descriptions than those found in other more ‘prototypical’ V-languages such as Spanish. Likewise, differences have been found between speakers of different S-languages with respect to the expression of manner. When describing the emergence of the owl in the ‘owl exit scene’ in the frog story, speakers of Russian tended to use manner verbs to a greater extent than speakers of Mandarin and Tai, who, in turn, used these verbs more frequently than speakers of three Germanic languages, namely English, German and Dutch (Slobin, 2004, 2006). These intra-typological differences seem to be largely due to the different morpho-syntactic structure and the lexical availability of the languages in question, such as the expression of path by means of verb particle in German languages versus prefixes in Slavic languages.² In fact, the noticing of these differences has led several authors (e.g. Slobin, 2004; Zlatev & Yangklang, 2004) to argue for the existence of a third type of typological pattern that would include, among others, serial-verb languages such as Tai and Mandarin Chinese, that is languages previously categorized by Talmy (1985,2000b) as S-languages. This type of languages, referred to as equipollently framed languages by Slobin (2004, 2006), would be characterized by the expression of both manner and path via elements that are equal both in formal linguistic terms and in their force of significance.

On the basis of these intra-typological differences, Slobin (2004, 2006) has suggested that, at least with respect to manner of motion, languages should be categorized on a cline of manner salience rather than in a strict bipartite typology. Manner salience, which is defined by Slobin (2006: 64) as ‘... the level of attention paid to manner in describing events’, can be assessed through various means, including ease of lexical access (i.e. the easiness with which speakers of different languages can list manner-of-motion verbs in a specific time span), the frequency and diversity with which manner information is provided by speakers of different languages in both natural conversational use and elicited speech, and the imagery and understanding of manner verbs by these speakers. In high-manner-salient languages, there is an accessible slot for manner in the language (e.g. in the main verb in S-languages and in the manner verb in serial-verb languages), whereas in low-manner-salient languages, such as V-languages, manner is subordinated to path and is thus typically expressed in a separate constituent. Speakers of high-manner-salient languages are from childhood exposed to more frequent and more varied manner information in the input, tend to regularly and easily provide frequent and varied manne...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Motion in Danish as a Second Language: Does the Learner”s L1 Make a Difference?
• Chapter 2: The Role of Thinking for Speaking in Adult L2 Speech: The Case of (Non)unidirectionality Encoding by American Learners of Russian
• Chapter 3: Can an L2 Speaker”s Patterns of Thinking for Speaking Change?
• Chapter 4: Thinking for Speaking and Immediate Memory for Spatial Relations
• Chapter 5: The Gloss Trap
• Chapter 6: Linguistic Effects on Thinking for Writing: The Case of Articles in L2 English
• Chapter 7: Grammatical Morpheme Inadequacy as a Function of Linguistic Relativity: A Longitudinal Case Study
• Chapter 8: Conclusion: On the Interdependence of Conceptual Transfer and Relativity Studies
• References
• Index