Préface

Au nom de toute l’équipe de Aile … Lia L’année 2009 marque un tournant pour la revue Aile. La disparition brutale de son Directeur, Clive Perdue, en mars 2008 a plongé la communauté des chercheurs en Sciences du langage dans la plus grande douleur, et tout particulièrement ses amis et collègues les plus proches qui avaient contribué à la naissance et à l’essor de la revue. Néanmoins, conformément à l’un des souhaits les plus chers de Clive, Aile continue à vivre, élargissant même ses horizons..

Preface

On behalf of the entire team of Aile … Lia The year 2009 is a turning point for the journal Aile. The brutal disappearance of its Director, Clive Perdue, in March 2008 left the community of linguists in tremendous pain, particularly his closest friends and colleagues who had participated in the birth and development of the journal. However, following one of Clive’s dearest wishes, Aile continues to live, and will even expand its horizons and ambitions from 2009 on. The journal remains devoted..

Children's verbalizations of motion events in German

Recent studies in language acquisition have paid much attention to linguistic diversity and have begun to show that language properties may have an impact on how children construct and organize their representations. With respect to motion events, Talmy (2000) has proposed a typological distinction between satellite-framed (S) languages that encode PATH in satellites, leaving the verb root free for the expression of MANNER, and verb-framed (V) languages that encode PATH in the verb, requiring MANNER to be expressed in the periphery of the sentence. This distinction has lead to the hypothesis (Slobin 1996) that MANNER should be more salient for children learning S-languages, who should have no difficulty combining it with PATH, as compared to those learning V-languages. This hypothesis was tested in a corpus elicited from German children and adults who had to verbalize short animated cartoons showing motion events, and the results are compared with previous analyses of French and English corpora elicited in an identical situation (Hickmann et al. 2009). As predicted, and as previously found for English, German children from three years on systematically express both MANNER (in the verb root) and PATH (in particles), in sharp contrast to French children, who rarely package MANNER and PATH together. These results suggest that, when they are engaged in communication, children construct spatial representations in accordance with the particular properties of their mother tongue. Future research is necessary to determine the extent to which cross-linguistic differences in production may reflect deeper differences in the allocation of attention and in conceptual organization

Preface

On behalf of the entire team of Aile … Lia The year 2009 is a turning point for the journal Aile. The brutal disappearance of its Director, Clive Perdue, in March 2008 left the community of linguists in tremendous pain, particularly his closest friends and colleagues who had participated in the birth and development of the journal. However, following one of Clive’s dearest wishes, Aile continues to live, and will even expand its horizons and ambitions from 2009 on. The journal remains devoted..

Children's verbalizations of motion events in German

Recent studies in language acquisition have paid much attention to linguistic diversity and have begun to show that language properties may have an impact on how children construct and organize their representations. With respect to motion events, Talmy (2000) has proposed a typological distinction between satellite-framed (S) languages that encode PATH in satellites, leaving the verb root free for the expression of MANNER, and verb-framed (V) languages that encode PATH in the verb, requiring MANNER to be expressed in the periphery of the sentence. This distinction has lead to the hypothesis (Slobin 1996) that MANNER should be more salient for children learning S-languages, who should have no difficulty combining it with PATH, as compared to those learning V-languages. This hypothesis was tested in a corpus elicited from German children and adults who had to verbalize short animated cartoons showing motion events, and the results are compared with previous analyses of French and English corpora elicited in an identical situation (Hickmann et al. 2009). As predicted, and as previously found for English, German children from three years on systematically express both MANNER (in the verb root) and PATH (in particles), in sharp contrast to French children, who rarely package MANNER and PATH together. These results suggest that, when they are engaged in communication, children construct spatial representations in accordance with the particular properties of their mother tongue. Future research is necessary to determine the extent to which cross-linguistic differences in production may reflect deeper differences in the allocation of attention and in conceptual organization

Les entités spatiales dans la langue : étude descriptive, formelle et expérimentale de la catégorisation

While previous linguistic and psycholinguistic research on space has mainly analyzed spatial relations, the studies reported in this paper focus on how language distinguishes among spatial entities. Descriptive and experimental studies first propose a classification of entities, which accounts for both static and dynamic space, has some cross-linguistic validity, and underlies adults' cognitive processing. Formal and computational analyses then introduce theoretical elements aiming at modelling these categories, while fulfilling various properties of formal ontologies (generality, parsimony, coherence...). This formal framework accounts, in particular, for functional dependences among entities underlying some part-whole descriptions. Finally, developmental research shows that language-specific properties have a clear impact on how children talk about space. The results suggest some cross-linguistic variability in children's spatial representations from an early age onwards, bringing into question models in which general cognitive capacities are the only determinants of spatial cognition during the course of development

How adult English learners of French express caused motion: A comparison with English and French natives

This study examines the impact of typological properties (satellite - vs. verb-framed languages) on the expression of caused motion during adult second language acquisition. Productions were elicited by means of animated cartoons from 24 English learners of French (12 low-intermediate, 12 advanced) as compared to 24 native speakers (12 English, 12 French). The responses of native speakers differed with respect to semantic density (English>French) and to the systematic (English) vs. variable (French) devices used. As for learners, their utterance density increased with proficiency level as they acquired complex structures. Source/target language properties influenced this process, as shown by their increasing attempt to produce target-like structures that nonetheless remained source-like at both proficiency levels. These typological constraints suggest that learners do not construct an entirely independent linguistic system during second language acquisition and that L2 mastery may require some re-conceptualization of spatial information. The discussion indicates research directions that might explore the implications of these results for language teaching.Cette étude examine l’impact des propriétés typologiques des langues (à satellites ou à cadrage verbal) sur l’expression du mouvement provoqué au cours de l’acquisition des langues secondes par l’adulte. Le corpus comprend des productions recueillies au moyen de supports animés auprès de 24 locuteurs anglophones apprenant le français à deux niveaux de compétence (12 débutants-moyens, 12 avancés) et de 24 locuteurs natifs (12 anglophones, 12 francophones). Les natifs diffèrent quant à la densité sémantique de leurs réponses (anglais>français) et ils utilisent des moyens systématiques (anglais) ou variables (français) pour exprimer l’information. Quant aux apprenants, la densité sémantique de leurs réponses augmente avec leur niveau de compétence grâce à l’apprentissage de nouvelles structures complexes. Ces locuteurs tentent de produire des structures cibles, qui restent néanmoins conformes à la langue source aux deux niveaux de compétence, montrant l’impact des langues L1/L2. Ces contraintes typologiques indiquent que les apprenants ne construisent pas un système linguistique entièrement indépendant au cours de l’acquisition et que leur maîtrise de la L2 pourrait passer par une re-conceptualisation de l’information spatiale. De nouvelles directions de recherche sont nécessaires afin d’explorer les implications de ces résultats pour l’enseignement des langues

How adult English learners of French express caused motion: A comparison with English and French natives

This study examines the impact of typological properties (satellite - vs. verb-framed languages) on the expression of caused motion during adult second language acquisition. Productions were elicited by means of animated cartoons from 24 English learners of French (12 low-intermediate, 12 advanced) as compared to 24 native speakers (12 English, 12 French). The responses of native speakers differed with respect to semantic density (English>French) and to the systematic (English) vs. variable (French) devices used. As for learners, their utterance density increased with proficiency level as they acquired complex structures. Source/target language properties influenced this process, as shown by their increasing attempt to produce target-like structures that nonetheless remained source-like at both proficiency levels. These typological constraints suggest that learners do not construct an entirely independent linguistic system during second language acquisition and that L2 mastery may require some re-conceptualization of spatial information. The discussion indicates research directions that might explore the implications of these results for language teaching.Cette étude examine l’impact des propriétés typologiques des langues (à satellites ou à cadrage verbal) sur l’expression du mouvement provoqué au cours de l’acquisition des langues secondes par l’adulte. Le corpus comprend des productions recueillies au moyen de supports animés auprès de 24 locuteurs anglophones apprenant le français à deux niveaux de compétence (12 débutants-moyens, 12 avancés) et de 24 locuteurs natifs (12 anglophones, 12 francophones). Les natifs diffèrent quant à la densité sémantique de leurs réponses (anglais>français) et ils utilisent des moyens systématiques (anglais) ou variables (français) pour exprimer l’information. Quant aux apprenants, la densité sémantique de leurs réponses augmente avec leur niveau de compétence grâce à l’apprentissage de nouvelles structures complexes. Ces locuteurs tentent de produire des structures cibles, qui restent néanmoins conformes à la langue source aux deux niveaux de compétence, montrant l’impact des langues L1/L2. Ces contraintes typologiques indiquent que les apprenants ne construisent pas un système linguistique entièrement indépendant au cours de l’acquisition et que leur maîtrise de la L2 pourrait passer par une re-conceptualisation de l’information spatiale. De nouvelles directions de recherche sont nécessaires afin d’explorer les implications de ces résultats pour l’enseignement des langues