A study of Motion Event Expressions in Cognition: A Case study of College EFL Learners in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Jhyyi Chen, 陳智怡
• Other Authors: Rueih-Lirng Fahn
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/76670741233806012193

博士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系博士班 === 101 === This paper investigates and compares the expression of motion events between native speakers of English and native Chinese speakers. Learners’ experiencing schema, learners’L1 word net, and cross-linguistic language frameworks are noted as the main foci, while an exploration details how L2 learners interpret motion events from their perception of the world. Three tests were conducted. The first test focused on native English speakers’ use of lexical patterns of motion and their parent relationship with Ground. The second test focused on native Chinese participants’ use of lexical patterns of motion and their parent relationship with Ground. The third test was the supplementary test which is used to study native Chinese participants’ English translation from motion events written in Chinese. 18 hand-drawn pictures containing motion events that were drawn from the story of “Ratatouille” were presented to 23 native English speakers in test 1 and 90 Chinese participants in test 2 who depicted the motion events in the pictures with open-questionnaire format. 90 Chinese participants in test 2 were required to translate these sentences from Chinese to English in test 3 one week after they have completed test 2. The comparison of participants in test 1 and 2 presented that English native speakers used Path to express the relations of Motion and Ground but Chinese participants in test 2 often used Path to express the position of Motion. The analysis of the findings showed Chinese participants focused on the position of motion more than the elaboration of the Motion and Ground when they depicted the motion event in the 18 pictures. Besides, when the meaning of Path of motion in English can be translated as the same meaning of Path verb in Chinese, some students in test 2 used Chinese Path verb as the path of motion to describe the path of motion in their written English. These two findings might explain why Chinese EFL learners with limited English proficiency have difficult in learning or using proper preposition or particles to express the relation of Motion and Ground in English. The comparison of test 2 and test 3 showed that the influence of first language to Chinese participants could be reduced on their written production in English if they depicted the 18 motion events from pictures but not from the written Chinese. Further, the results showed that participants with better English proficiency could produce more lexical patterns of motion corresponded to an English lexical patterns of motion (Motion + Path) then participants with limited English proficiency. Thus, the English proficiency plays an important role when Chinese participants want to reach native speakers like written production.