Rosalía Calle Bocanegra
Romanica Cracoviensia, Tom 21, Numer 3, Tom 21 (2021), s. 239 - 252
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843917RC.21.024.14196Motion encoding by Czech learners of Spanish: Influence of L1 Thinking-for-Speaking patterns in L2
This paper studies verbal encoding of motion events by Czech advanced learners of Spanish and Spanish native speakers. Since these languages differ in terms of Talmy’s (2000) typology of motion encoding, the study aims to assess to what extent the learners acquired the Thinking-for-Speaking patterns (Slobin 1996) of the L2. To this end, written narratives by natives and learners are examined and compared. The results show that the construction “path verb + manner complement”, a typical structure for verb-framed languages such as Spanish, is used significantly less often by the learners compared with the natives. The results also indicate that L1 interference happens when expressing boundary crossing situations in Spanish by the learners, since they tend to use a Manner of motion verb.