Vol. 18:2 (2020) ► pp.316–349
Boundary-crossing events across languages
A study on English speakers, Spanish speakers and second language learners
This study analyses how speakers of two typologically distinct first languages (English (N = 12) and Spanish (N = 16)) and a group of 19 Spanish second language learners of English express boundary-crossing events, what type of verb they use, and how they segment these motion events. The stimuli used were 12 pictures of boundary-crossing events indicating motion into, out of and over a bounded space. In task 1 participants described each of the 12 scenes freely and in task 2 they were provided with a specific Manner verb between brackets. Significant differences were found in boundary-crossing and event segmentation in both L1 and L2. Participants also differed significantly in the type of verb used in the two tasks.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Motion events across languages
- 3.Boundary-crossing across languages
- 4.Methodology
- 4.1Participants
- 4.2Stimuli and procedures
- 5.Results
- 5.1Type of verb
- 5.2Boundary-crossing
- 5.3Event segmentation
- 5.4Type and token analyses
- 6.Discussion
- 6.1Verb types
- 6.2Type of boundary-crossing
- 6.3Event segmentation
- 6.4Type/token analysis
- 7.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
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References
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00062.alo