Language-specific and universal influences in children’s syntactic packaging of Manner and Path: A comparison of English, Japanese, and Turkish

Allen, Shanley; Özyürek, Aslı; Kita, Sotaro; Brown, Amanda; Furman, Reyhan; Ishizuka, Tomoko; Fujii, Mihoko

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.12.006

Cited by 190 publications

(196 citation statements)

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“…These differences are already in place as early as three years of age in Path vs. Manner languages (Allen, Özyürek, Kita, Brown, Furman, Ishizuka & Fujii, 2007;Slobin, 1996Slobin, , 2003cf. Naigles, Eisenberg, Kako, Highter & McGraw, 1998;Papafragou, Massey & Gleitman, 2002, 2006 and affect conjectures about the meanings of novel verbs in both children and adults (Naigles & Terrazas, 1998;Papafragou & Selimis, 2007).…”

Section: Nonlinguistic Representations Of Motion Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does language guide event perception? Evidence from eye movements

2008

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Languages differ in how they encode motion. When describing bounded motion, English speakers typically use verbs that convey information about manner (e.g., slide, skip, walk) rather than path (e.g., approach, ascend), whereas Greek speakers do the opposite. We investigated whether this strong cross-language difference influences how people allocate attention during motion perception. We compared eye movements from Greek and English speakers as they viewed motion events while (a) preparing verbal descriptions, or (b) memorizing the events. During the verbal description task, speakers' eyes rapidly focused on the event components typically encoded in their native language, generating significant cross-language differences even during the first second of motion onset. However, when freely inspecting ongoing events, as in the memorization task, people allocated attention similarly regardless of the language they speak. Differences between language groups arose only after the motion stopped, such that participants spontaneously studied those aspects of the scene that their language does not routinely encode in verbs. These findings offer a novel perspective on the relation between language and perceptual/cognitive processes. They indicate that attention allocation during event perception is not affected by the perceiver's native language; effects of language arise only when linguistic forms are recruited to achieve the task, such as when committing facts to memory.

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Section: Nonlinguistic Representations Of Motion Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does language guide event perception? Evidence from eye movements

2008

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“…We asked children and adults to produce short narratives as they talked about 10 animated short movies (used in Allen et al, 2007;Kita et al, 2007;and Ö zyürek et al, 2005). The movies contain motion events in which simultaneously occurring manner and path are both salient.…”

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Note that the data for the English-and Turkish-speaking adults and 3-year-olds come from the same data set reported in Allen et al (2007). However, the criteria for using the data of individual participants, as well as the units of analysis used, are somewhat different across the two studies, with resulting slight differences in the findings reported.…”

Section: Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the challenges for the field of language development has been to explain how children born to different languages learn language-specific ways of encoding spatial information. Previous research has shown that children's early spatial expressions largely follow the language-specific distinctions of their adult counterparts (e.g., Allen et al, 2007;Choi & Bowerman, 1991;Ö zçalişkan & Slobin, 1999), demonstrating that children are tuned to the language-specific semantic distinctions of their languages early on. In addition, some universal preferences for linguistic encoding of spatial information have been posited Bowerman, 1982;Johnston & Slobin, 1979), suggesting that language learning can also be guided by cognitive prerequisites or linguistic defaults.…”

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confidence: 97%

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Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture: Motion events in English and Turkish.

Özyürek¹,

Kita²,

Allen³

et al. 2008

Developmental Psychology

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104

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The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific ways from age 3 onward (i.e., English speakers used 1 clause and Turkish speakers used 2 clauses to express manner and path). In contrast, English-and Turkish-speaking children's gestures looked similar at ages 3 and 5 (i.e., separate gestures for manner and path), differing from each other only at age 9 and in adulthood (i.e., English speakers used 1 gesture, but Turkish speakers used separate gestures for manner and path). The authors argue that this pattern of the development of cospeech gestures reflects a gradual shift to language-specific representations during speaking and shows that looking at speech alone may not be sufficient to understand the full process of language acquisition.

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“…Iconic gesture in normal language and word searching conditions: A case of conduction aphasia. Published in International Journal of 15(5),[524][525][526][527][528][529][530][531][532][533][534] children (Allen, Özyürek, Kita, Brown, Furman, Ishizuka & Fujii. 2007;Özyürek, Kita, Allen, Brown, Furman, & Ishizuka, 2008).…”

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Iconic gesture in normal language and word searching conditions: A case of conduction aphasia

Pritchard

Cocks

Dipper

2013

International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Online is checked for eligibility for copyright before being made available in the live archive. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to from other web pages. Permanent repository link Versions of researchThe version in City Research Online may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check the Permanent City Research Online URL above for the status of the paper. EnquiriesIf you have any enquiries about any aspect of City Research Online, or if you wish to make contact with the author(s) of this paper, please email the team at publications@city.ac.uk. Canary Row. All gesture produced was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. WT produced more iconic gestures than controls accompanying word searching behaviour, whereas he produced a similar frequency of iconic gestures to control participants alongside normal language. The iconic gestures produced in the two language contexts also differed qualitatively. Frequency of iconic gesture production was not affected by limb apraxia. This study suggests that there are differences between iconic gestures that are produced alongside normal language and those produced alongside word searching behaviour. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

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Language-specific and universal influences in children’s syntactic packaging of Manner and Path: A comparison of English, Japanese, and Turkish

Cited by 190 publications

References 24 publications

Does language guide event perception? Evidence from eye movements

Does language guide event perception? Evidence from eye movements

Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture: Motion events in English and Turkish.

Iconic gesture in normal language and word searching conditions: A case of conduction aphasia

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