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Chapter 7. Linguistic relativity in first language acquisition

Spatial language and cognition
  • Maya Hickmann✝
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Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems
This chapter is in the book Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems

Abstract

The relationship between language and cognition is perhaps one of the oldest questions in the history of social and cognitive sciences. This question is presently at the center of lively debates in light of a growing number of cross-linguistic studies suggesting that language-specific factors could have an impact on language acquisition and even more generally on cognitive organization. This chapter illustrates some results in the domain of space, with particular attention to the expression of motion in two languages (French and English) that lexicalize spatial information in different types of structures (Talmy 2000). The synthesis of these results shows striking cross-linguistic differences in how adults and children (two to ten years) express different types of voluntary and caused motion events in a variety of situations, indicating that typological constraints affect how children organize information from the youngest age onwards. The discussion points to ongoing research that further explores the language-cognition interface in order to examine the potentially deeper impact of language-specific factors on speakers’ conceptual representations of space.

Abstract

The relationship between language and cognition is perhaps one of the oldest questions in the history of social and cognitive sciences. This question is presently at the center of lively debates in light of a growing number of cross-linguistic studies suggesting that language-specific factors could have an impact on language acquisition and even more generally on cognitive organization. This chapter illustrates some results in the domain of space, with particular attention to the expression of motion in two languages (French and English) that lexicalize spatial information in different types of structures (Talmy 2000). The synthesis of these results shows striking cross-linguistic differences in how adults and children (two to ten years) express different types of voluntary and caused motion events in a variety of situations, indicating that typological constraints affect how children organize information from the youngest age onwards. The discussion points to ongoing research that further explores the language-cognition interface in order to examine the potentially deeper impact of language-specific factors on speakers’ conceptual representations of space.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction. New perspectives in the study of first and second language acquisition 1
  4. Part I. Emergence and dynamics of language acquisition and disorders
  5. Chapter 1. A tale of two paradigms 17
  6. Chapter 2. Dynamic systems methods in the study of language acquisition 33
  7. Chapter 3. Early bootstrapping of syntactic acquisition 53
  8. Chapter 4. Language acquisition in developmental disorders 67
  9. Part II. First language acquisition
  10. Chapter 5. Language development in a cross-linguistic context 91
  11. Chapter 6. A typological approach to first language acquisition 109
  12. Chapter 7. Linguistic relativity in first language acquisition 125
  13. Chapter 8. On the importance of goals in child language 147
  14. Chapter 9. Promoting patients in narrative discourse 161
  15. Chapter 10. On-line grammaticality judgments 179
  16. Chapter 11. The expression of finiteness by L1 and L2 learners of Dutch, French, and German 205
  17. Part III. Bilingualism and second language acquisition
  18. Chapter 12. Age of onset in successive acquisition of bilingualism 225
  19. Chapter 13. The development of person-number verbal morphology in different types of learners 249
  20. Chapter 14. Re-thinking the bilingual interactive-activation model from a developmental perspective (BIA-d) 267
  21. Chapter 15. Foreign language vocabulary learning 285
  22. Chapter 16. Cerebral imaging and individual differences in language learning 299
  23. Chapter 17. The cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition and bilingualism 307
  24. Index of languages 323
  25. Index of subjects 325
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.52.10hic

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction. New perspectives in the study of first and second language acquisition 1
  4. Part I. Emergence and dynamics of language acquisition and disorders
  5. Chapter 1. A tale of two paradigms 17
  6. Chapter 2. Dynamic systems methods in the study of language acquisition 33
  7. Chapter 3. Early bootstrapping of syntactic acquisition 53
  8. Chapter 4. Language acquisition in developmental disorders 67
  9. Part II. First language acquisition
  10. Chapter 5. Language development in a cross-linguistic context 91
  11. Chapter 6. A typological approach to first language acquisition 109
  12. Chapter 7. Linguistic relativity in first language acquisition 125
  13. Chapter 8. On the importance of goals in child language 147
  14. Chapter 9. Promoting patients in narrative discourse 161
  15. Chapter 10. On-line grammaticality judgments 179
  16. Chapter 11. The expression of finiteness by L1 and L2 learners of Dutch, French, and German 205
  17. Part III. Bilingualism and second language acquisition
  18. Chapter 12. Age of onset in successive acquisition of bilingualism 225
  19. Chapter 13. The development of person-number verbal morphology in different types of learners 249
  20. Chapter 14. Re-thinking the bilingual interactive-activation model from a developmental perspective (BIA-d) 267
  21. Chapter 15. Foreign language vocabulary learning 285
  22. Chapter 16. Cerebral imaging and individual differences in language learning 299
  23. Chapter 17. The cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition and bilingualism 307
  24. Index of languages 323
  25. Index of subjects 325
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