English speakers attend more strongly than Spanish speakers to manner of motion when classifying novel objects and events.

Abstract

Three experiments provide evidence that the conceptualization of moving objects and events is influenced by one's native language, consistent with linguistic relativity theory. Monolingual English speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in an English-speaking context performed better than monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in a Spanish-speaking context at sorting novel, animated objects and events into categories on the basis of manner of motion, an attribute that is prominently marked in English but not in Spanish. In contrast, English and Spanish speakers performed similarly at classifying on the basis of path, an attribute that is prominently marked in both languages. Similar results were obtained regardless of whether categories were labeled by novel words or numbered, suggesting that an English-speaking tendency to focus on manner of motion is a general phenomenon and not limited to word learning. Effects of age of acquisition of English were also observed on the performance of bilinguals, with early bilinguals performing similarly in the 2 language contexts and later bilinguals showing greater contextual variation.

The effect of language mode on motion event descriptions in German–French bilinguals

“…However, in these studies the mode is not systematically manipulated for the sake of comparison; the goal is merely to induce a monolingual mode in the target language. The study of Kersten, Meissner, Lechuga, Schwartz, Albrechtsen, and Iglesias (2010) compares the attention to manner of motion in bilinguals that are tested in either a Spanish-or an English-speaking context. According to the results of their categorization task, context (arguably inducing either a monolingual Spanish or a monolingual English mode) influences the attention to manner in the expected way, based on the linguistic typology.…”

Typology in the classroom: Fostering Motion-Event awareness in Spanish-speaking ELLs

“…Addressing this concern, several empirical studies have investigated the cognitive development of motion event awareness of language learners whose L1 and L2 differ typologically (CifuentesFérez & Gentner, 2006;Kersten et al, 2010;Larrañaga, Treffers-Daller, Tidball, & Gil Ortega, 2012;Naigles & Terrazas, 1998;Papafragou & Selimis, 2010;Papafragou, Massey, & Gleitman, 2006;Skordos & Papafragou, 2014). These studies have begun to paint the picture of motionevent awareness in L1 and L2 language users and offer important implications for L2 language pedagogy.…”

“…Finally, Kersten et al (2010) examined manner and path depictions in monolingual speakers of English and Spanish. In their study, participants were presented with visual frames of bug-like creatures half of which completed a novel manner-of-motion and the other half a path-of-motion movement.…”

“…As such, it is reasonable to anticipate similar linguistic transfer difficulties with Spanishspeaking ELLs whose L1 focuses less on manner of movement and more on path. Naigles and Terrazas (1998), Cifuentes-Férez and Gentner (2006), and Kersten et al (2010) examined the extent to which native speakers rely on the characteristic semantic patterns of English and Spanish when confronted with novel verbs of motion. These researchers tested native speakers' responses to novel vocabulary with varying methodologies, yet their analysis of such input provided similar conclusions.…”

“…Much of this research has examined both the typological classifications of languages as well as comparisons between languages and subsequent effects on L2 acquisition as well. Examples of such comparative research include English/Spanish (Kersten et al, 2010;Larrañaga, Treffers-Daller, Tidball, & Gil Ortega, 2012), English/Russian (Elliott & Yountchi, 2009;Gor, Cook, Malyushenkova, & Vdovina, 2009;Hasko, 2009), English/Basque/Spanish (IbarretxeAntuñano, 2004(IbarretxeAntuñano, , 2009(IbarretxeAntuñano, , 2012, English/Chinese (Ji, Hendricks, & Hickman, 2011;Wu, 2011), English/ Serbian (Filipović & Vidaković, 2010), Spanish/ Danish (Cadierno, 2010;Cadierno & Ruiz, 2006), and even classifications of the Austronesian languages (Rau, Chun-Chieh, & Hui-Huan, 2012). …”