A Look into the Acquisition of English Motion Event Conflation by Native Speakers of Chinese and Japanese

A Look into the Acquisition of English Motion Event Conflation by Native Speakers of Chinese and Japanese Ryan Spring Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University Aoba-ku Kawauchi 41, Sendai City, 980-8576, Japan ryan_haru@yahoo.co.jp Abstract. Since Talmy (2000 a&b) introduced his linguistic typology based on event conflation, it has been the source of much debate and ongoing research. One area that can particularly benefit from such research is the field of Second Language Acquisition. Cadierno (2008), Inagaki (2002) and many others have attempted to unveil the differences and difficulties that occur when learning a second language that is of a different type than one's native language. However, the current research in this area has thus far only dealt with satellite-framed and verb-framed languages. According to Slobin (2004), Chen and Guo (2008) and others, languages such as Chinese can be considered to be of a third type, known as equipollently-framed languages. This paper presents research that has attempted to observe the differences and similarities in the acquisition of a satellite-framed language (English) by native speakers of a verb-framed language (Japanese) and an equipollently- framed language (Chinese). Keywords: Second Language Acquisition, Motion Events, Event Conflation, Cognitive Linguistics, Equipollently-framed Language 1 Introduction Talmy (2000 a&b) introduced the idea of complex events that he termed 'macro-events'. He said that such events can be conceptualized as being comprised of two simpler events and the relation between them. For example, (1a), shown below, can be conceptualized as one event, and thus expressed in one sentence or phrase, but is actually made up of the two events, shown in (1b) and (1c). (1)a. Jack rode his bike to school. b. Jack rode his bike. c. Jack went to school. Talmy (2000 a&b) termed this conceptualization of two or more simpler events into one macro- event 'conflation'. After observing the conflation patterns of several different languages, Talmy (2000 a&b) deemed that all languages could be broken into two types based on where the language encoded the 'main event'. When the macro-event is motion, the 'main event' is considered to be the path of the motion, while the 'sub-event' is considered to be the manner of motion. Talmy (2000 a&b) dubbed languages that encoded the path of motion onto the main verb of the sentence 'verb-framed languages', and those that encoded the path of motion onto another particle 'satellite-framed languages'. Talmy (2000 a&b) has determined Spanish to be a verb-framed language, and gives the example shown in (2) as evidence. As can be seen, Spanish encodes the path of motion onto the verb, and puts details about the manner of motion into other particles, such as adverbs. PACLIC 24 Proceedings 563 (2)a. La botella entró a la cueva flotando. The bottle moved.in to the cave floating. “The bottle floated into the cave.” b. El globo subió por la chimenea flotando. The balloon moved.up through the chimney floating. “The balloon floated up the chimney.” Meanwhile, English is considered to be a satellite-framed language by Talmy (2000 a&b), as it …

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