Boundary-crossing events across languages

Abstract

Abstract This study analyses how speakers of two typologically distinct first languages (English (N = 12) and Spanish (N = 16)) and a group of 19 Spanish second language learners of English express boundary-crossing events, what type of verb they use, and how they segment these motion events. The stimuli used were 12 pictures of boundary-crossing events indicating motion into, out of and over a bounded space. In task 1 participants described each of the 12 scenes freely and in task 2 they were provided with a specific Manner verb between brackets. Significant differences were found in boundary-crossing and event segmentation in both L1 and L2. Participants also differed significantly in the type of verb used in the two tasks.