BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Motion events in bilingual first language acquisition: the impact 
 of typology on crosslinguistic interactions - Helen Engemann\, RCEAL\, Uni
 versity of Cambridge
DTSTART:20110517T150000Z
DTEND:20110517T163000Z
UID:TALK30175@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Chris Cummins
DESCRIPTION:Recent crosslinguistic research has revived debates concerning
  the relative impact\nof language-specific and general cognitive constrain
 ts on language acquisition\n(Bowerman & Choi 2003\, Allen et al. 2007). In
  this talk\, I examine the implications\nof Talmy’s (2000) proposed typo
 logical contrast between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages for bi
 lingual language acquisition of English and French. I present\nresults of 
 an experimental study testing the effect of language-specific ways of\npac
 kaging information on bilingual production strategies.\n\nIn an elicited p
 roduction task\, simultaneous bilingual children (aged 4\, 6\, 8 and 10)\n
 and age-matched monolingual controls described animated cartoons showing c
 omplex\ncaused motion and simpler voluntary motion events. Results indicat
 ed a unidirectional\npattern of crosslinguistic influence: whilst bilingua
 ls’ English responses closely\nparalleled monolingual development\, bili
 ngual children’s French descriptions showed\na preference for English in
 formation packaging. I discuss how the directionality of\nthis crosslingui
 stic interaction may be linked to (i) task-specific requirements\, (ii) th
 e\ndegree of variation of lexicalization patterns\, and (iii) the formal c
 omplexity required\nfor information-dense descriptions.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR