Describing Motion Events in Adult L2 Spanish Narratives

When learning a second language (L2), learners are faced with the challenge of having to learn appropriate word combinations from L2 input that –in many cases– are only implicitly available (Bialystok, 1978; Ellis, 1991; Krashen, 1982, 1985). This challenge becomes even more evident when the two languages differ on how semantic elements are represented at the sentence level. Learners have to reformulate their existing meaning-form patterns in order to incorporate other patterns that may respond to very different orders. We can attest that learners have incorporated the new L2 word combinations if they are successful at conveying their messages in a communicative situation. The purpose of this study is to research one example of language content that is presented implicitly: the lexicalization of motion events. Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000) studied the lexicalization of motion in his attempt to understand how the meaning-form relationship varies across languages. The process of lexicalization should be understood as the way meaning becomes incorporated into a given morpheme in language specific ways. In its basic form, a motion event refers to a situation that implies movement in space and during a time interval e.g., The Pink Panther chased the little bird (Frawley, 1992, p.170). However, not all descriptions of movement entail displacement in space or translational motion. There are other situations that also involve space and time, and yet movement itself is almost imperceptible. This kind of space event is known as positional event or location e.g., The Pink Panther was in bed (Frawley, 1992, p. 170). In this study, we concern ourselves with the lexicalization of translational motion in oral narratives in L2 Spanish. In other words, we would like to determine what lexical forms L2 Spanish speakers use to express events that imply displacement of an entity through space in the context of a story. In his study, Talmy (1985, 2000) presents the following four elements as internal components of a motion event: 1. Figure: It indicates the object that is in movement or that is located with respect to another object. 2. Ground: It serves as a reference-point for the displacement of the moving object. 3. Path: It refers to the trajectory followed by the Figure in relation to the Ground object. 4. Motion: It expresses the existence of motion or location in the event. In addition, Talmy also identified manner and cause as two properties that provide us with additional semantic information about the movement. In effect, the manner of motion shows that a specific movement may be the outcome of features such as speed (e.g., pick up snap up) or intensity (e.g., knock – hammer). On the other hand, the cause of motion indicates that the application of a force induces the motion (e.g., kicked the ball, pushed the chair). The following sentences taken from Talmy (2000, p.26) exemplify the use of these semantic components in a basic motion event: