Second Language Acquisition of Motion Events: Thinking for Speaking in Spanish L2 by German, Italian and French speakers

Hijazo-Gascón, A.

University of Zaragoza

The distinction between Verb-framed and Satellite-Framed languages relies on the different way languages codify the semantic components involved in motion events (Talmy, 2000). Stemming from this typology, Slobin´s (1996) Thinking for speaking considers that the linguistic resources available in one´s language direct our attention to some aspects of motion. The application of Thinking for Speaking to Second Language Acquisition points out that speakers tend to transfer linguistic patterns of their first language into the second language (Brown & Gullberg, 2008, 2010, Cadierno & Ruiz 2006, Filipović & Vidaković 2010). However, most of these studies focus on the intertypological differences, comparing the acquisition of an S-language by V-language speakers, or the other way round.
There are several studies that point out differences among languages within the V-Language group, either with respect to the Manner component (i.e. Basque: Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2009a; Japanese: Sujiyama, 2005) or in relation to the Path component (Basque: Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2009b). Furthermore, some satellite-like patterns have been found in different Romance languages (i.e. Romansch: Berthele 2004; Aragonese: Hijazo-Gascón & Ibarretxe-Antuñano, in press; Italian: Iacobini, 2009, Schwarze, 1985).
This paper deals with the acquisition of Motion Events in Spanish as a Second Language by students whose first language is either Italian, French or German (12 speakers per group). Data are elicited using the Frog story methodology (Berman and Slobin, 1994). It is argued that there will be differences in their performance in the target language due to crosslinguistic influence (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008). The analysis shows that there are intertypological differences between the German and the Romance groups with respect to Manner of motion but, interestingly enough, there are also intratypological differences with regard to the Path of motion among the Romance groups. Italian speakers´ performance is not so ‘Romance-like’ as expected.