Crossing and Bridging Spaces in L2: A Corpus-Based Investigation of Motion Talk

by American Learners of Russian

Dissertation Director Dr. James Lantolf

 

Every sphere of human life and development is intimately connected with motion. Just as motion is interwoven into our way of life, linguistic expressions of motion events permeate human language. For second language (L2) learners, the ability to express and understand motion events as they are encoded in an L2 is central for their successful interaction, functioning, and socialization in a new linguistic and cultural community.

 

My dissertation employs corpus-based contrastive analysis and narrative inquiry to investigate to what extent advanced American learners of Russian (RL2) are able to utilize the lexical, semantic, and structural potential of Russian to describe motion events. The study draws on a large spoken learner corpus, as well as parallel baseline native Russian and English corpora comprised of narratives elicited through visual stimuli (three short movie clips and a picture book), life story narratives, and socioeducational profiles of the participants. The dissertation addresses the following research questions: (1) which linguistic structures are favored by native speakers of Russian and English for description of motion events in the contexts employed in the study?; (2) how do RL2 learners use these linguistic structures in the context of the same tasks?; (3) which features of Russian motion talk are the most problematic for RL2 learners?; and (4) how does RL2 learners’ first language influence their motion talk performance?

 

In addition to contributing to the under-researched topic of acquisition of motion talk in L2 Russian, the dissertation’s focus on unrehearsed L2 performance offers the field of SLA insights into the notion and nature of advanced-level language proficiency, especially on the tasks of high ecological validity. The study will also create a solid foundation for further investigations on bilingual cognition with regard to spatial conceptualization and issues of teaching/ learning of conceptual fluency in L2 classrooms.

College of Education

Language and Literacy Education

Foreign Language Education

Linguistics Program

GA Department of Education