Chapter published in:
Motion and Space across Languages: Theory and applications
Edited by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano
[Human Cognitive Processing 59] 2017
► pp. 61–94

Expressing and categorizing motion in French and English

Verbal and non-verbal cognition across languages

| CNRS & University of Paris 8
| University of Mannheim
| University of Lille 3
| University of Cambridge
| CNRS & University of Paris 8
Language-specific properties influence motion expression (Slobin 2004; Talmy 2000), but it is still debated whether they also influence non-verbal spatial cognition. We compare how English and French speakers perform three tasks involving motion events: non-verbal categorization based on cartoons during a dual task (articulatory suppression); verbal categorization involving target sentences; and descriptions of motion events. Descriptions show more manner expression in English and variation in both groups as a function of event properties. However, both groups frequently choose Path as categorization criterion, particularly in verbal categorization, but language effects do show that English speakers are more sensitive to event properties. Thus, typology has a strong impact on verbal cognition but also a partial influence on non-verbal cognition that must be taken into account in future research on the relation between language and thought.
Keywords: categorization, lexicalization, Manner (of motion), Path (of motion), spatial cognition, typology
Published online: 14 August 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.59.04hic
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