s from severalanimation clips which involves various kinds of motion events and it fills up the deficiencyof motion event researches in SLA field as Cadierno (2004) pointed out: available researches on L2 appeared to be “rather scare” when compared to those on L1. What’smore, most studies generally consider the language typology that obviously belongs to theclear dichotomous categorization, namely S- and V-languages (e.g. Engemann, Harr &Hickmann, 2012; Luk, 2012; Vidakovic, 2012). Contrastively, few researches focus onother language typology that may not perfectly meet the characteristics of S- or V-language, viz., EQUIPOLLENTLY-FRAMED language (hereafter E-language) (Slobin,2004; Zlatev & Yangklang, 2004), such as Chinese. Moreover, the present study adoptsempirical approach which can provide more convincing proof for the typology of Chinese,after all Talmy’s typology framework is based on the characteristic expressions whichmandates close examination of language use. Last not not least, existing researchconclusions as to the effect of L1 typological pattern on SLA have not reached anagreement and the main contradictions are in the following aspects: on one hand, whetherthe differences of typologies between L1 and L2 can lead to second language learners’acquisition difficulty; on the other hand, whether the similarities of typology between L1and L2 can promote SLA. Thus, a further study deep into the typology framing effects onsecond language acquisition is of necessity, especially when it is concerned with Chinesetowards which there exists various opinions, and certainly the final conclusion will providenew evidence.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
This chapter mainly concerns about the available relevant researches centering on thetopic of language-specific characteristics from the typological perspective in the domain ofL1 acquisition and also those investigating the potential effects of language typologies inthe process of L2 acquisition. Moreover, special attention will be payed to the studieswhich are related to the typology of Chinese.
2.1 Relevant Studies on L1 Motion EventAcquisition
According to Talmy’s creative bipartite typology (1985, 2000) of languages andSlobin’s thinking-for-speaking hypothesis (2004), languages with typological distinctionsbehave differently in terms of their characteristic way of selecting relevant semanticcomponents as well as their application of lexicalization patterns to motion eventexpressions. Based on these two theories, a lot of studies have been carried out toinvestigate whether and how typologically conventionalized patterns in different languagesinfluence L1 motion eventacquisition.
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2.2 Relevant Studies on L2 Motion EventAcquisition
The bulk of researches on L1 motion event acquisition intrigues scholars’ increasinginterest in L2 domain to investigate how and to what extent L2 learners can acquire L2 andwhether L1’s thinking-for-speaking can influence the process of SLA. As Cadierno (2004)pointed out, a large number of studies on L1 acquisition have been carried out to testify thevalidity of Talmy’s typological framework and Slobin’s thinking-for-speaking, however,the investigation of how L2 learners acquire motion event expressions is still “a ratherneglected area” and the existing empirical studies are rather limited.According to Slobin (1996a), learning a language is at a same time learning a specific wayof thinking-for-speaking, namely learning to attend to particular aspects of motion eventsand verbalize in a lexicalized way characterized in target language. Generally thecharacteristic conventionalized patterns of L1 can be acquired at an early age, which oncehas been form will be resistant to be reconstructed in SLA. Considering this, the differentthinking-for-speaking in L1 may
