Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies

Thinking-for-Speaking to Describe Motion Events

English-Japanese bilinguals’ L1 English and L2 Japanese Speech and Gesture

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Abstract

Speaking a second language (L2) involves another way of “thinking for speaking” (Slobin 1996). Adopting Talmy’s typological framework of motion event description, this study examined how learning Japanese as L2 restructures English-Japanese bilingual speakers’ thinking-for-speaking. Thirteen English-speaking intermediate learners of L2 Japanese described motion events in English and Japanese. The analysis focused on speech and gesture describing ‘rolling down’ and ‘swinging’ events, for which English and Japanese native speakers’ descriptions differ (Kita, Özyürek 2003). The results suggest some restructuring in their thinking-for-speaking.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Presentato: 14 Febbraio 2020 | Accettato: 11 Giugno 2020 | Pubblicato 03 Luglio 2020 | Lingua: en

Keywords Thinking-for-Speaking • Gesture • English-Japanese bilinguals • Motion event description • Talmy’s typology

Copyright © 2020 Noriko Iwasaki, Keiko Yoshioka. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-428-8/004


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