Cross-linguistic research has renewed old questions concerning universal vs. language-specific determinants of child language. Our experiments show differences in how French vs. English speakers from three years on talk about static and dynamic spatial entities. In English frequent satellites encode static spatial relations or path, verb roots focus on posture or manner. French verbs express varied information about location or caused motion (entity properties, manner of attachment, functional disposition) and focus on path with spontaneous motion. Developmental progressions occur in both languages, but most strikingly in French, where children increasingly rely on verbs and combine them with other devices in denser utterances. The discussion highlights how such variations in information locus and focus may affect language and cognitive development.
2014. French–Dutch bilinguals do not maintain obligatory semantic distinctions: Evidence from placement verbs. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17:1 ► pp. 22 ff.
2023. Enhancing English spatial prepositions acquisition among Spanish learners of English as L2 through an embodied approach. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 61:4 ► pp. 1391 ff.
Cadierno, Teresa, Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano & Alberto Hijazo-Gascón
2023. Reconstructing the expression of placement events in Danish as a second language. Frontiers in Psychology 13
Cadierno, Teresa, Iraide Ibarretxe‐Antuñano & Alberto Hijazo‐Gascón
2016. Semantic Categorization of Placement Verbs in L1 and L2 Danish and Spanish. Language Learning 66:1 ► pp. 191 ff.
2021. THE SPECIFICITY OF EVENT EXPRESSION IN FIRST LANGUAGE INFLUENCES EXPRESSION OF OBJECT PLACEMENT EVENTS IN SECOND LANGUAGE. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 43:4 ► pp. 838 ff.
Listhaug, Kjersti Faldet
2014. Les prépositions spatiales en français et en norvégien : une étude expérimentale et comparative. Syntaxe & Sémantique N° 15:1 ► pp. 199 ff.
2015. Ways of crossing a spatial boundary in typologically distinct languages. Applied Psycholinguistics 36:2 ► pp. 485 ff.
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