Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2014-09
Thinking for speaking: the expression of motion events by Russian and Chinese learners of Catalan as a second language / Pensar para hablar: la expresión de eventos de movimiento en hablantes nativos de ruso y mandarín que aprenden catalán como una segunda lengua
In this study we provide evidence for the influence of L1 typological patterns in elicited narratives in Catalan by bilingual speakers of three different typological languages. The expression of the semantic components of Path and Manner of motion of Russian L1 speakers and Mandarin L1 speakers was compared to that of native Catalan speakers. Following the Thinking for Speaking framework, it was hypothesized that if the preferred semantic structure of L1 is transferred to the L2, then productions would be organized and structured differently according to the typological characteristics of L1. Results show different patterns of expression in L2 with regard to lexical choice and syntactic-semantic structure. We argue that the results provide empirical support for the Thinking for Speaking hypothesis.
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