Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-vpjdr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-24T18:50:50.922Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Motion in first language acquisition: Manner and Path in French and English child language*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2008

MAYA HICKMANN ,
PIERRE TARANNE  and
PHILIPPE BONNET
MAYA HICKMANN*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Structures Formelles du Langage, CNRS & Université Paris 8
PIERRE TARANNE
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Structures Formelles du Langage, CNRS & Université Paris 8
PHILIPPE BONNET
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Psychologie et Neurosciences Cognitives, CNRS & Université Paris 5
*
[*]Address for correspondence: Maya Hickmann, CNRS UPS-Pouchet, Laboratoire Structures Formelles du Langage, 59 rue Pouchet, 75017 Paris, France. e-mail: maya.hickmann@sfl.cnrs.fr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Two experiments compared how French vs. English adults and children (three to seven years) described motion events. Given typological properties (Talmy, 2000) and previous results (Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Hickmann, 2003; Slobin, 2003), the main prediction was that Manner should be more salient and therefore more frequently combined with Path (MP) in English than in French, particularly with four types of ‘target’ events, as compared to manner-oriented ‘controls’: motion up/down (Experiment I, N=200) and across (Experiment II, N=120), arrivals and departures (both experiments). Results showed that MP-responses (a) varied with events and increased with age in both languages, but (b) were more frequent in English at all ages with all events, and (c) were age- and event-specific among French speakers, who also frequently expressed Path or Manner alone. The discussion highlights several factors accounting for responses, with particular attention to the interplay between cognitive factors that drive language acquisition and typological properties that constrain this process from early on.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , September 2009 , pp. 705 - 741
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Allen, S., Özyürek, A., Kita, S., Brown, A., Furman, R., Ishizuka, T. & Fujii, M. (2007). How language-specific is early syntactic packaging of Manner and Path? A comparison of English, Turkish, and Japanese. Cognition 102(1), 16–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. & Slobin, D. I. (eds) (1994). Different ways of relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1996). The origins of children's spatial semantic categories: Cognitive versus linguistic determinants. In Gumperz, J. J. & Levinson, S. C. (eds) Rethinking linguistic relativity, 145–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (2007). Containment, support, and beyond: Constructing topological spatial categories in first language acquisition. In Aurnague, M., Hickmann, M. & Vieu, L. (eds) Spatial entities in language and cognition, 177–203. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowerman, M. & Choi, S. (2001). Shaping meanings for language: universal and language-specific in the acquisition of spatial semantic categories. In Bowerman, M. & Levinson, S. C. (eds) Language acquisition and conceptual development, 475–511. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowerman, M. & Choi, S. (2003). Space under construction: Language-specific categorization in first language acquisition. In Gentner, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (eds) Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought, 387–427. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, S. & Bowerman, M. (1991). Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition 41, 83–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, E. (2003). Language and representations. In Gentner, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (eds) Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought, 17–24. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grinevald, C. (2006). The expression of static location in a typological perspective. In Hickmann, M. & Robert, S. (eds) Space in languages: Linguistic systems and cognitive categories, 29–56. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gullberg, M., Hendriks, H. & Hickmann, M. (2008). Learning to talk and gesture about motion in French. First Language 28, 200–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hickmann, M. (2003). Children's discourse: Person, space and time across languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hickmann, M. & Hendriks, H. (2006). Static and dynamic location in French and in English. First Language 26(1), 103–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hickmann, M., Hendriks, H. & Champaud, C. (2008). Motion in French child language: Typological constraints on its emergence and development. In Guo, J., Lieven, E., Budwig, N., Ervin-Tripp, S., Nakamura, K. & Özçaliskan, S. (eds) Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language. Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hickmann, M., Hendriks, H. & Roland, F. (1998). Référence spatiale dans les récits d'enfants français: perspective inter-langues. Langue Française 118, 104–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, J. R. (1988). Children's verbal representation of spatial location. In Stiles-Davis, J., Kritchevsky, M. & Bellugi, U. (eds) Spatial cognition: Brain bases and development, 195–205. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Kopecka, A. (2004). Etude typologique de l'expression de l'espace: localisation et déplacement en français et en polonais. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université Lumière Lyon 2.Google Scholar
Kopecka, A. (2006). The semantic structure of motion verbs in French: Typological perspectives. In Hickmann, M. & Robert, S. (eds) Space in languages: Linguistic systems and cognitive categories, 83–101. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kopecka, A. (in press). From a satellite- to a verb-framed pattern: A typological shift in French. In Cuyckens, H., De Mulder, W. & Mortelmans, T. (eds) Variation and change in adpositions of movement. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Landau, B. & Lakusta, L. (2006). Spatial language and spatial representation: Autonomy and interaction. In Hickmann, M. & Robert, S. (eds) Space in languages: Linguistic systems and cognitive categories, 309–333. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (1996). Relativity in spatial conception and description. In Gumperz, J. J. & Levinson, S. C. (eds) Rethinking linguistic relativity, 177–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (2003). Language and mind: Let's get the issues straight! In Gentner, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (eds) Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought, 25–46. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandler, J. M. (1988). How to build a baby: On the development of an accessible representational system. Cognitive Development 3, 113–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandler, J. M. (1998). Representation. In Damon, W., Kuhn, D. & Siegler, R. S. (eds) Handbook of child psychology, Vol. 2, 255–308. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Munnich, E. & Landau, B. (2003). The effects of spatial language on spatial representation: Setting some boundaries. In Gentner, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (eds) Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought, 113–55. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1996). From ‘thought and language’ to ‘thinking for speaking’. In Gumperz, J. J. & Levinson, S. C. (eds) Rethinking linguistic relativity, 70–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (2003). The many ways to search for a frog. In Strömqvist, S. & Verhoeven, L. (eds) Relating events in narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives, 219–57. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (2006). What makes manner of motion salient? Explorations in linguistic typology, discourse, and cognition. In Hickmann, M. & Robert, S. (eds) Space across languages: Linguistic systems and cognitive categories, 59–81. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spelke, E. S. (1994). Initial knowledge: Six suggestions. Cognition 50, 431–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spelke, E. S. (1998). Nativism, empiricism, and the origins of knowledge. Infant Behavior & Development 21, 181–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spelke, E. S. (2003). What makes us smart? Core knowledge and natural language. In Gentner, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (eds) Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought, 277–311. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talmy, L. (2000). Towards a cognitive semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Weissenborn, J. & Klein, W. (1982). HERE and THERE: Cross-linguistic studies in deixis and demonstration. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar