Path, Ground and Manner in Spanish-Swedish bilinguals: the effects of a second language in the patterns for motion encoding of a first language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7764/onomazein.36.01Keywords:
Spanish as a heritage language, L2 acquisition, bilingualism, conceptual transfer, thinking for speaking, motion eventsAbstract
This study addresses how Spanish-Swedish early and late bilinguals express motion
events in their inherited language or first language: Spanish. We draw on the idea that the
habitual conceptualization of events also underlies both L2 usage (Flecken et al., 2014: 51)
and L1 usage in bilinguals (Bylund and Jarvis, 2011). Drawing both on studies about second
language acquisition and bilingualism we aim to study how the typological patterns for
motion encoding of the L2 (a satellite-framed language) may impact on motion encoding in the
L1 (a verb-framed language), which the group under study has had but a reduced contact
with while growing up in Sweden. Considering this fact and starting off from the assumption
that an early age of break with the L1 environment has an impact on how motion events are
described in an L1 (Bylund, 2009), we aim to outline the conceptualization of motion events of
two groups of bilinguals, in all 31 subjects, and the different sorts of transfer phenomena that
may affect their speech. Oral narratives produced by the bilinguals have been compared to
two control groups of Spanish and Swedish monolinguals and then been examined in order
to analyze their conflation patterns regarding Manner of motion, Path and Ground information.
Our results have lead us finally to conclude that both the individuals’ age of second
language acquisition and their length of residence in the L2 environment have affected their
L1 conceptualization patterns