Thinking for speaking about motion: L1 and L2 speech and gesture

Abstract

It has been claimed that speakers of Spanish and English have different patterns of thinking for speaking about motion both linguistically and gesturally (Stam 1998; McNeill and Duncan 2000; McNeill 2000; Kellerman and van Hoof 2003; Neguerela et al. 2004). For example, Spanish speakers' path gestures tend to occur with path verbs, while English speakers tend to occur with satellites (adverbs or prepositions) and verbs + satellites. What happens when Spanish speakers learn English, where do their gestures occur? Also, what do their gestures tell us that their speech alone does not?

To investigate these questions, this study examines the use of ‘path’ gestures in motion event narrations of a group of native Spanish speakers, a group of native English speakers, and two groups of Spanish learners of English (intermediate and advanced). L2 learners' gestures revealed L1 thinking for speaking patterns with grammatically correct and fluent L2 speech.