Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-16T19:17:14.128Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language and thought in a multilingual context: The case of isiXhosa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

EMANUEL BYLUND  and
PANOS ATHANASOPOULOS
EMANUEL BYLUND*
Affiliation:
Stockholm University, Sweden & Stellenbosch University, South Africa
PANOS ATHANASOPOULOS
Affiliation:
University of Reading, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Emanuel Bylund, Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Department of Swedish and Multilingualism, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Swedenmanne.bylund@biling.su.se
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Situated within the grammatical aspect approach to motion event cognition, this study takes a first step in investigating language and thought in functional multilinguals by studying L1 isiXhosa speakers living in South Africa. IsiXhosa being a non-aspect language, the study investigates how the knowledge and use of additional languages with grammatical aspect influence cognition of endpoint-oriented motion events among L1 isiXhosa speakers. Results from a triads-matching task show that participants who often used aspect languages and had greater exposure to English in primary education were less prone to rely on endpoints when categorising motion events.

Keywords

linguistic relativitymotion eventsgrammatical aspectmultilingualismisiXhosa
Type
Research Note
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 431 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research was funded through the SANPAD project Community Development through Early Literacy. We are grateful to the three anonymous BLC reviewers and editor Carmen Silva-Corvalán for their insightful comments on a previous version of this manuscript. We also wish to express our gratitude to Christiane von Stutterheim and Barbara Schmiedtová at Heidelberg University for making their video clips available to us, and to Petar Simonovic for proof-reading the paper. All remaining errors are entirely our own.

References

Abrahamsson, N., & Hyltenstam, K. (2008). The robustness of aptitude effects in near-native second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 481–509.Google Scholar
Aronin, L., & Singleton, D. (2012). Multilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Athanasopoulos, P. (2007). Interaction between grammatical categories and cognition in bilinguals: The role of proficiency, cultural immersion, and language of instruction. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22, 689–699.Google Scholar
Athanasopoulos, P. (2009). Cognitive representation of colour in bilinguals: The case of Greek blues. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 83–95.Google Scholar
Athanasopoulos, P., & Bylund, E. (2013). Does grammatical aspect affect motion event cognition? A cross-linguistic comparison of English and Swedish speakers. Cognitive Science, 37, 286–309.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Athanasopoulos, P., Damjanovic, L., Krajciova, A., & Sasaki, M. (2011). Representation of colour concepts in bilingual cognition: The case of Japanese blues. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 9–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Athanasopoulos, P., Dering, B., Wiggett, A., Kuipers, J.-R., & Thierry, G. (2010). Perceptual shift in bilingualism: Brain potentials reveal plasticity in pre-attentive colour perception. Cognition, 116, 437–443.Google Scholar
Athanasopoulos, P., & Kasai, C. (2008). Language and thought in bilinguals: The case of grammatical number and nonverbal classification preferences. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 105–123.Google Scholar
Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boroditsky, L., Fuhrman, O., & McCormick, K. (2011). Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently? Cognition, 118, 123–129.Google Scholar
Brown, R., & Lenneberg, E. H. (1954). A study of language and cognition. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 454–462.Google Scholar
Buell, L. C. (2005). Issues in Zulu verbal morphosyntax. Los Angeles, CA: ProQuest.Google Scholar
Bylund, E. (2009). Effects of age of L2 acquisition on L1 event conceptualization patterns. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 305–322.Google Scholar
Bylund, E., Abrahamsson, N., & Hyltenstam, K. (2012). Does first language maintenance hamper nativelikeness in a second language? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34, 215–241.Google Scholar
Bylund, E., Athanasopoulos, P., & Oostendorp, M. (2013). Motion event cognition and grammatical aspect: Evidence from Afrikaans. Linguistics, 51, 929–955.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bylund, E., & Jarvis, S. (2011). L2 effects on L1 event conceptualization. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 47–59.Google Scholar
Census (2012). Census in brief. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cook, V., & Bassetti, B. (eds.) (2011). Language and bilingual cognition. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Cook, V., Bassetti, B., Kasai, C., Sasaki, M., & Takahashi, J. A. (2006). Do bilinguals have different concepts? The case of shape and material in Japanese L2 users of English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 10, 137–152.Google Scholar
Daller, M. H., Treffers-Daller, J., & Furman, R. (2011). Transfer of conceptualization patterns in bilinguals: The construal of motion events in Turkish and German. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 95–119.Google Scholar
Davidoff, J., Davies, I., & Roberson, D. (1999). Colour categories in a stone-age tribe. Nature, 398, 203–204.Google Scholar
Doke, C. M., & Mofokeng, S. M. (1985). Textbook of southern Sotho grammar. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman.Google Scholar
Du Plessis, J. A. (1978). IsiXhosa. Goodwood: Oudiovista.Google Scholar
Field, A. (2007). Discovering statistics using SPSS. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Flecken, M. (2011). Event conceptualization by early Dutch–German bilinguals: Insights from linguistic and eye-tracking data. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 61–77.Google Scholar
Forbes, J. N., Poulin-Dubois, D., Rivero, M., & Sera, M. (2008). Grammatical gender affects bilinguals’ conceptual gender: Implications for linguistic relativity and decision making. The Open Applied Linguistics Journal, 1, 68–76.Google Scholar
Guthrie, M. (1948). The classification of the Bantu languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Han, Z., & Cadierno, T. (eds.). (2010). Linguistic relativity in SLA: Thinking for speaking. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Haun, D., Rapold, C., Janzen, G., & Levinson, S. (2011). Plasticity of human spatial cognition: Spatial language and cognition covary across cultures. Cognition, 119, 70–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–83 Google Scholar
Hobson, C. (1999). Morphological development in the interlanguage of English learners of Xhosa. Ph.D. dissertation, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.Google Scholar
Imai, M., & Gentner, D. (1997). A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning: Universal ontology and linguistic influence. Cognition, 62, 169–200.Google Scholar
January, D., & Kako, E. (2007). Re-evaluating evidence for linguistic relativity: Reply to Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 104, 417–426.Google Scholar
Jarvis, S. (2011). Crosslinguistic influence in bilinguals’ concepts and conceptualizations. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kurinski, E., & Sera, M. D. (2011). Does learning Spanish grammatical gender change English-speaking adults’ categorization of inanimate objects? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 203–220.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive Grammar: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Lucy, J. A. (1992). Grammatical categories and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lucy, J. A. (1997). Linguistic relativity. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 291–312.Google Scholar
MacLaren, J. (1936). A Xhosa grammar. Cape Town: Longmans.Google Scholar
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H. K., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 940–967.Google Scholar
Menard, S. (2001). Applied logistic regression analysis. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Mesthrie, R. (2002). Language in South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Meyers, L. S., Gamst, G., & Guarino, A. J. (2006). Applied multivariate research: Design and interpretation. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Miles, L. K., Tan, L., Noble, G. D., Lumsden, J., & Macrae, C. N. (2011). Can a mind have two time lines? Exploring space–time mapping in Mandarin and English speakers. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 598–604.Google Scholar
Motsei, A. (2010). The expression of aspect in Sesotho. Ph.D. dissertation, Stellenbosch University.Google Scholar
Muñoz, C. (2006). Age and the rate of foreign language learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ncoko, S. O. S., Osman, R., & Cockcroft, K. (2000). Codeswitching among multilingual learners in primary schools in South Africa: An exploratory study. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 3, 225–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, P. (2012). A morpho-semantic analysis of aspectuality in siSwati: A cognitive approach to the analysis of the alterative, persistive and inceptive aspects in siSwati. London: Lambert Academic Publishing.Google Scholar
Nurse, D. (2008). Tense and aspect in Bantu. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Oostendorp, M. (2012). New perspectives on cross-linguistic influence: Language and cognition. Language Teaching, 45, 389–398. [A comparative book review.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papafragou, A., & Selimis, S. (2010). Event categorisation and language: A cross-linguistic study of motion. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25, 224–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (1999). New approaches to concepts in bilingual memory. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2, 209–230.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2005). Bilingualism and thought. In Kroll, J. F. & de Groot, A. M. B. (eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches, pp. 433–453. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2011a). Introduction. In Pavlenko (ed.), pp. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (ed.) (2011b). Thinking and speaking in two languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Setati, M. (2005). Teaching mathematics in a primary multilingual classroom. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 36, 447–466.Google Scholar
Taljaard, P. C., Khumalo, J. N., & Bosch, S. E. (1991). Handbook of Siswati. Cape Town: J. L. van Schaik.Google Scholar
Von Stutterheim, C., Andermann, M., Carroll, M., Flecken, M., & Schmiedtová, B. (2012). How grammaticized concepts shape event conceptualization in language production: Insights from linguistic analysis, eye tracking data, and memory performance. Linguistics, 50, 833–867.Google Scholar
Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings (edited by J. B. Carroll). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Yeni-Komshian, G. H., Flege, J. E., & Liu, S. (2000). Pronunciation proficiency in the first and second languages of Korean–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3, 131–149.Google Scholar
Ziervogel, D., & Mabuza, E. (1976). A grammar of the Swati language. Cape Town: Van Schaik.Google Scholar