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Transfer of conceptualization patterns in bilinguals: The construal of motion events in Turkish and German*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

MICHAEL H. DALLER ,
JEANINE TREFFERS-DALLER  and
REYHAN FURMAN
MICHAEL H. DALLER*
Affiliation:
University of the West of England, Bristol
JEANINE TREFFERS-DALLER
Affiliation:
University of the West of England, Bristol
REYHAN FURMAN
Affiliation:
Radboud University, Nijmegen
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Michael Daller, University of the West of England, Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UKMichael.Daller@uwe.ac.uk
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Abstract

In the present article we provide evidence for the occurrence of transfer of conceptualization patterns in narratives of two German–Turkish bilingual groups. All bilingual participants grew up in Germany, but only one group is still resident in Germany (n = 49). The other, the returnees, moved back to Turkey after having lived in Germany for thirteen years (n = 35). The study is based on the theoretical framework for conceptual transfer outlined in Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) and on the typology of satellite-framed and verb-framed languages developed by Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000a, b) and Slobin (1987, 1996, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006). In the present study we provide evidence for the hypothesis that language structure affects the organization of information structure at the level of the Conceptualizer, and show that bilingual speakers’ conceptualization of motion events is influenced by the dominant linguistic environment in both languages (German for the group in Germany and Turkish for the returnees). The returnees follow the Turkish blueprints for the conceptualization of motion, in both Turkish and German event construals, whereas the German-resident bilinguals follow the German blueprints, when speaking German as well as Turkish. We argue that most of the patterns found are the result of transfer of conceptualization patterns from the dominant language of the environment.

Keywords

thinking for speakingtransfersecond language acquisitionmotion event construalTurkish–German bilinguals
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 14 , Issue 1: Crosslinguistic influence in bilinguals' concepts and conceptualizations , January 2011 , pp. 95 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

We would like to thank Scott Jarvis for his continuous support and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

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