Previous research on the L1 acquisition of motion event expression suggests that mapping multiple semantic components onto syntactic units is associated with greater difficulties in verb-framed than in satellite-framed languages, because the former require more complex structures (using subordination). This study investigated the impact of this language-specific difference in English–French bilingual children’s caused motion expressions. 2L1 children (n = 96) between 4 and 10 years and monolingual English and French children (n = 96) described video animations portraying caused motion events involving multiple semantic components. Results revealed reduced rates of subordinate constructions in bilinguals’ French descriptions, and more so in older than younger children, while English responses aligned with monolinguals. Semantic density of responses strongly predicted syntactic complexity, but exclusively in French. These asymmetric findings indicate a task-specific syntactic relief strategy and are discussed in the context of theoretical claims about universal biases of event encoding and bilingual-specific optimisation strategies.

Talmy’s motion event typology has served as a fruitful framework for exploring bilingual cognition and language use. The present study extends this line of research to the bilingualism situation of an underrepresented Turkic language, i.e., Modern Uyghur, and Mandarin Chinese, and it does so by focusing on a relatively understudied type of motion, i.e., caused motion. The two languages are genetically and typologically distinct, and yet they share verb-framing as an important lexicalization pattern in encoding motion. This study, therefore, investigated whether and to what extent this structural overlap contributes to crosslinguistic influence in Uyghur–Chinese adult bilinguals’ construal of caused motion. Thirty Uyghur–Chinese adult bilinguals’ verbalizations were analyzed with respect to the number of semantic components expressed and the way they were syntactically packaged. Results were compared with relevant monolingual data, which showed that Uyghur–Chinese adult bilinguals displayed a strong L1 to L2 influence in syntactic packaging by overusing the verb-framed strategy in Mandarin Chinese. However, further comparisons with previous research on Uyghur–Chinese child and adult bilinguals’ motion construal revealed that, while structural overlap is a key factor motivating crosslinguistic influence, a coherent explanation of this phenomenon must consider more general principles of bilingual language processing and use.

The current study explores how multilingual speakers with three typologically different languages (satellite-framed, verb-framed and equipollent-framed) encode and gauge event similarity in the domain of caused motion. Specifically, it addresses whether, and to what extent, the acquisition of an L2-English and an L3-Japanese reconstructs the lexicalization and conceptualization patterns established in the L1-Cantonese when the target language is actively involved in the decision-making process. Results show that multilingual speakers demonstrated an ongoing process of cognitive restructuring towards the target language (L3) in both linguistic encoding (event structures and semantic representations) and non-linguistic conceptualization (reaction time). And the degree of the restructuring is modulated by the amount of language contact with the L2 and L3. The study suggests that learning a language means internalizing a new way of thinking and provides positive evidence for L3-biased cognitive restructuring within the framework of thinking-for-speaking.

Previous research on motion expression indicates that typological properties influence how speakers select and express information in discourse (Slobin, 2004; Talmy, 2000). The present study further addresses this question by examining the expression of caused motion by adults and children (three to ten years) in French (Verb-framed) vs. English and German (Satellite-framed). Participants narrated short animated cartoons showing an agent displacing objects and varying along several dimensions (Path, Manner). A significant increase with age was found in the number of expressed motion components in all languages, as well as an influence of Path (vertical > boundary crossing). However, at all ages, participants encoded more information in English and German than in French, where more variation and structural changes occurred with increasing age. These findings highlight both cognitive and typological factors impacting the expression of caused motion in development. Implications of our findings are sketched in the ‘Discussion’.

Does the way we talk about events correspond to how we conceptualize them? Three experiments (N = 135) examined how Spanish and Swedish native speakers judge event similarity in the domain of caused motion (‘He rolled the tyre into the barn’). Spanish and Swedish motion descriptions regularly encode path (‘into’), but differ in how systematically they include manner information (‘roll’). We designed a similarity arrangement task which allowed participants to give varying weights to different dimensions when gauging event similarity. The three experiments progressively reduced the likelihood that speakers were using language to solve the task. We found that, as long as the use of language was possible (Experiments 1 and 2), Swedish speakers were more likely than Spanish speakers to base their similarity arrangements on object manner (rolling/sliding). However, when recruitment of language was hindered through verbal interference, cross-linguistic differences disappeared (Experiment 3). A compound analysis of all experiments further showed that (i) cross-linguistic differences were played out against a backdrop of commonly represented event components, and (ii) describing vs. not describing the events did not augment cross-linguistic differences, but instead had similar effects across languages. We interpret these findings as suggesting a dynamic role of language in event conceptualization.

Although spatial understanding by human beings tends to be universal, the linguistic system to represent one’s spatial experience varies significantly across languages. This study explores implications of this contrast in the field of second language acquisition by examining how adult Chinese learners of English express caused motion in an experimental situation in which they are asked to describe animation clips showing caused motion with varied types of Manner and Path to an imaginary remote addressee. Our findings showed that across proficiencies, L2 learners acclimated to the target system very rapidly and produced responses that were target-like with respect to the selection of motion components and the syntactic means to organize selected information components over an utterance. These results suggest that the acquisition process of caused motion can be facilitated when L1 and L2 share some typological properties and the target system to be acquired is the simple and unambiguous one of the two typological patterns concerned.