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Convergence of temporal reference frames in sequential bilinguals: event structuring unique to second language users*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2014

NORBERT VANEK  and
HENRIËTTE HENDRIKS
NORBERT VANEK*
Affiliation:
University of York, UK
HENRIËTTE HENDRIKS
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Norbert Vanek, Centre for Language Learning Research, Department of Education, Derwent College, University of York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom[email protected]
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Abstract

Previous research suggests that the way grammatical aspect is encoded in the speaker's L1 influences event conceptualisation and its subprocesses even in highly advanced L2. Given the lack of consensus regarding the susceptibility to restructuring L1 principles in L2, this work contributes to the debate with two innovative components: it tests whether the susceptibility to adjust L1 (Czech and Hungarian) structuring principles in L2 (English) is dependent on a specific degree of L1-L2 overlap in aspect marking, and it examines unique learner-specific structuring techniques that surface in picture descriptions and film retellings, to illustrate how bilinguals’ temporal reference frames converge. Besides signalling the construction of a unitary conceptual frame, L2 results clearly show the importance of language distance for explaining the nature of sequential bilinguals’ temporal structuring. To embrace the implications of the reported phenomenon, a novel proposal is developed, incorporating grammatical knowledge types already at the stage of conceptualisation.

Keywords

conceptual convergencetemporal structuringgrammatical aspectsequential bilingualsthinking for speaking
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 753 - 768
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

The present research was kindly supported by the A. H. Lloyd Fund and the Levy-Plumb Fund at Christ's College Cambridge, the Cambridge European Trust as well as the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. We are grateful to Paul Hilder at the British Council Prague and to Ildikó Tóth at Katedra Budapest for facilitating data collection from Czech and Hungarian learners. We also thank the three reviewers for highly constructive advice on the earlier version of this article.

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