Structuring space in discourse: A comparison of
Chinese, English, French and German L1 and
English, French and German L2 acquisition1.
Henriëtte Hendriks
1. Reference to space and the narrative task
This study analyses the way in which adults learning a second language and
children learning their first language acquire how to spatially relate events in a
narrative2. Creating a functioning spatial surrounding for events involves a
number of capacities such as 1) cognitively representing the various spatial
constellations; 2) finding the appropriate linguistic means to express those
spatial constellations in the language being acquired; and 3) keeping track of
the spatial information across utterances in order for the narrative to be coherent with respect to the spatial domain.
One of the more basic definitions of a narrative states that a narrative consists of a sequence of temporally ordered events. Given this definition, there
does not seem to be much room for the analysis of space in a narrative, as
space is apparently not one of the main organizing domains. A simple example
such as (1) will make it clear, however, that first of all, although the features of
the example correspond to the definition, it is far from what we normally expect a narrative to be, and that secondly, even in this minimal form, the text
includes spatial information concerning the protagonists’ moving from one to
another location (from the here, with us, to the not here, i.e., their home).
(1) Alison and Alex came over. We had brunch and then they went home
again.
A number of researchers have therefore tried to formulate a more comprehensive definition of narrative. One line of research (Klein and von Stutterheim 1987) proposes that the structure of all coherent texts is constrained on
both global and local levels by the nature of the question — the Quaestio —
which the text in its entirety is meant to answer. According to this approach,
any utterance in the text integrates information from a combination of domains, the particular Quaestio influencing the way in which possible domains
of reference are realised at utterance and text level, and the development of the
domains across utterances. For a narrative, the temporal domain will be basic
for the organisation of the text, three other domains also being crucially in-
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volved, however, namely: space, persons (and objects), and events. For a route
description, the spatial domain will be more basic.
Most approaches have in common the idea that some clauses in the text
carry foregrounded information, others backgrounded information. The
Quaestio approach, for example, assumes that utterances directly answering
the Quaestio (in a narrative those pushing the time line forward by commenting on the sequence of events) form the foreground. Although we do not feel
that the foreground / background distinction is an easy one to make, it is important to know here that spatial information in a narrative may end up being
considered backgrounded, which probably explains why narratives can be
perfectly understandable even when lacking a spatial setting, as can be seen in
example (2) below (note, however, that although no explicit locations are mentioned, motion events are referred to).
(2)
Um this is the bird ... with chicks. And he’s flying away to get the chicks
something to eat. And this is the chicks and the cat ... and the dog right
over here. And the cat trying to climb to try to get them. Then the bird
flies back ... with a worm ... the cat – and then the cat and the dog (Ad:
uh hum) and then the dog ... and then the birds chased the dog and the
cat away (English 4-year-old).
When referring to space in a narrative, its main function is to localise protagonists, entities, and the events in which they are involved. Given that we
are dealing with texts rather than with single utterances, the spatial information may be provided across utterances and be understood depending on the
construction of the discourse and our understanding of the discoursepragmatic principles guiding this construction. These principles require that, if
possible, a spatial surrounding should be provided. If we follow the idea of a
story grammar (Mandler and Johnson 1977; Stein and Glenn 1979; Stein
1982), we might even expect this spatial information to turn up in the socalled setting, before the story really starts developing. Furthermore, in a
situation in which speaker and hearer do not share any mutual knowledge
about the contents of the narrative, discourse pragmatic principles require that
all new information be marked as such. In the European languages that we are
about to examine (English, French and German) such information is expected
to be marked locally with nominals with indefinite articles. In Chinese, the 4th
language in this study, it is marked globally with postverbal position. Once the
spatial frame is set, it may be inferred and need not be explicitly mentioned
anymore. Only changes of location involving a change of spatial frame must
be marked more or less explicitly, depending on discourse needs. Therefore,
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113
frequent utterances without any explicit reference to spatial locations are expected, as long as the events reported take place within the boundaries of a
non-changing space. When locations are explicitly referred to, it can be with
less explicit forms, e.g., pronominal rather than nominal ones. How to distribute the spatial information in order for it to be available when necessary but
not too explicit when superfluous is thus related to acquiring the discoursepragmatic principles in general.
Although these general discourse rules apply to all languages, several other
factors are also likely to have an impact on reference maintenance. First, languages differ in their tolerance of more or less explicit forms. Thus, Chinese is
more discourse-oriented than the European languages concerned here, one of
the results being that it sets fewer restrictions on the use of zero forms. Languages also organise the packaging of spatial information in importantly different ways, and it has been shown that this will also influence the level of
explicitness in reference maintenance, as we will see in the next section.
Finally, the contents of the story obviously will also have an impact on the
spatial organisation. Thus, in the present CAT story (cf. Appendix I), if we
assume the tree to be the most general possible location for protagonists and
events to take place, then the mother bird and baby birds are actually in that
tree, but the cat and dog are under, on, around, or next to the tree. Moreover,
the mother and babies are in the spatial frame right from the beginning of the
story. The cat and dog, however, come into the spatial frame only later,
thereby necessarily changing location from not being at the scene to being at
the scene. All this variation in spatial constellations will influence the choice
of linguistic means at utterance level and the organisation of spatial information across utterances.
2. Cross-linguistic variation in reference to space
Languages have a large number of linguistic means to express how one entity
(the Figure) is located with respect to some other entity (the Ground) (terminology as introduced by Talmy 1975, 1983, 1985). Although these linguistic
means reflect the conceptualisation of space by the human mind to some extent, they leave enough room for language-specific distinctions in the encoding of spatial information (Behrens 2001). To mention just some differences,
some languages encode all information in the verb root, others allow serial
verb constructions, and yet others supply a whole array of prepositions, verbparticles, etc.
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Some of this variation has been discussed in more detail and length than
other types of variation. Thus, since Talmy introduced his distinction between
verb-framed and satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1991), arguing that Romance languages are an example of the former and Germanic languages and
Chinese are an example of the latter, a number of studies have tried to explicate the effects of this distinction on the organisation of spatial information in
general and more specifically also on the discourse organisation in these types
of languages. The distinction according to Talmy is concerned with the properties described below.
Motion (or locating) situations express essential information such Motion
or non-motion (location) itself, and the Path of motion, and, less central to the
motion event, the Manner and Cause of motion. This conglomerate of spatially related information has to be “packaged” in a language-specific way
when space is referred to.
Verb-framed languages more characteristically encode the more fundamental parts of spatial information (Motion and Path) in the verb itself, whereas
satellite-framed languages rather encode the Path in the satellite. A few words
should be said here about what Talmy considers to be satellites. It includes
elements familiar to European languages such as prepositions, adverbs and
verb-particles, but in Chinese, it also includes parts of the so-called Resultative Verb Construction (RVC). The RVC is a sequence of two (or three) nonidentical verbs immediately following each other, i.e.:
Verb1-Verb2(-Verb3)
All these verbs can occur alone as main verbs, but can also occur in an RVC.
In the RVC, the first verb can be basically any kind of verb (encoding cause,
manner, path, etc.). The second verb, the so-called verb-complement and element considered a satellite by Talmy, can express a path or reaching of the
spatial goal. When a verb of locomotion occurs in the first position, it is readily followed by directional complements (satellites) as exemplified in (3).
(3)
Mão pá-shàng
shù
Cat crawl-ascend tree
‘The cat climbs up the tree’
As a result of the typological verb/satellite difference, the remaining information associated with motion, such as Manner and Cause, ends up in other parts
of speech. In satellite-framed languages, Manner is frequently encoded in the
verb root, resulting in a large number of verbs expressing a variety of Man-
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115
ners, such as English jump, crawl, hop, and Chinese pá (‘crawl’) as in (3)
above. In verb-framed languages, Manner and Cause tend to either not be expressed at all (it being less essential information), or to be expressed in a separate clause or gerundive type construction as in: en sautant, en courant, en
nageant, etc.
Talmy intended to speak of “tendencies” as far as packaging is concerned,
and since his work was published, a number of researchers such as Aske, Slobin and Hoiting, and Naigles et al. have tried to find reasons for the tendencies
to be followed or not. Results of these further studies show that the Romance
languages have a system in which some motion verbs conflate Manner and
some conflate Path (Aske 1989), the ones conflating Manner being restricted
in use. More specifically, Slobin and Hoiting (1994) claim that Path conflating
verbs are the obligatory option for all events that involve “entering”, “exiting”
or “crossing a boundary” (cf. also Hickmann 2003). Naigles et al (1998), finally, show how these differences in information encoded in the verb root
change utterance constructions referring to space in general. The satelliteframed languages typically provide more elaborate descriptions, the Manner
verbs in those languages typically being accompanied with satellites appearing
with or without explicit nouns referring to the Ground. In contrast, the Romance languages typically show bare verbs both when encoding Path and
when encoding Manner.
Some researchers, such as Slobin (1991), claim that differences in linguistic means at predicate and/or utterance level, will also have an influence on the
discourse organisational level. As he puts it: “In the time frame of constructing
utterances in discourse, one fits one’s thoughts into available linguistic
frames. ‘Thinking for speaking’ involves picking the characteristics of objects
and events that
a. fit some conceptualisation of the event, and
b. are readily encodable in the language”.
It was found that, when confronted with conceptually complex events such
as in examples (4) and (5) below, speakers of satellite framed languages tend
to encode the situation using dense packaging of information in the verb root
and a conglomerate of satellites, these means being readily available in their
language (as in example (4)), whereas Romance language speaking natives opt
for a distribution of information, creating a series of partly static descriptive
utterances, partly a single verb-root expressing the vertical path, as in (5).
(4)
The boy was thrown down the cliff into the river below by the deer.
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(5)
Le
garçon se
trouve en haut de la
colline.
The boy
refl. find
on top of the hill
En bas il y a
une rivière.
Below there’s a
river
Le
cerf le
pousse, et
il tombe.
The deer him pushes, and he falls
‘The boy finds himself on the top of the hill. Below there is a river. The
deer pushes him, and he falls’.
Carroll and von Stutterheim (1993) show that, when analyzing reference to
space in two space-typologically very similar languages, English and German
(both satellite-framed), the texts constructed for the same linguistic task in
those two languages are also strikingly different. In English the object domain,
that is, the objects and their intrinsic features, control the spatial domain,
whereas in German the deictically structured space has more autonomy, that
is, it can, in the process of text building, provide the basis, the background
against which objects can be placed. These differences cannot possibly be a
result of the availability of linguistic means in one language vs. the other,
since both languages have means to relate entities intrinsically and/or deictically.
Given the variation in reference to space in the different languages, we assume that learners will be confronted with different learning problems when
tackling the acquisition task. In the following we will try and formulate some
more specific acquisition problems and hypothesise how they may be solved
by the different groups of learners.
3. The acquisition task and some hypotheses
We started this paper by saying that, in order to structure space in discourse,
speakers need to acquire a number of capacities. The first of those concerned
the capacity to form a cognitive representation of the spatial constellations
involved in the narrative. A large number of studies concerning this capacity
in the child exist, a most influential one by Piaget and Inhelder (1947).
Findings of such studies show that well before children start speaking, they
know a great deal about space. With the help of non-linguistic tests, Piaget and
Inhelder established the emergence of spatial concepts such as containment,
support, proximity, etc., well before the age of four. This does not mean, however, that the child’s understanding of space at four years is adult-like. It is
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117
only when it reaches the level of representational thought, which is free of
space and time, that the child can be said to operate in a world in which it sees
itself as just one point in a bigger matrix full of inter-related points (as do
adults), rather than as the point from which all relations depart. For the purposes of the current study, however, the children seem conceptually efficiently
equipped.
If we assume that the cognitive representation of spatial constellations is
universal and not language specific (as Carroll and von Stutterheim may want
to suggest), adults learning a second language do not have to acquire this capacity anymore, because once acquired it serves for the rest of their lives.
The second capacity we mentioned concerned the acquisition of appropriate forms to express the spatial constellations. Again, a large number of studies have analysed the child’s acquisition of those forms, that is, prepositions,
verbs, verb-particles, etc. Cross-linguistic studies (Slobin 1973; Johnston and
Slobin 1979) compared the acquisition of spatial expressions in up to nineteen
different languages, and found that children at very similar ages acquire forms
for the same type of spatial constellations, starting cross-linguistically with
forms to express the containment concept, then moving on to the support concept, vicinity, and the front-back axis. The latter pair of spatial expressions is
acquired around 4;8.
A large number of studies has investigated the driving forces behind the
acquisition of spatial terms. In the eighties, based on the cross-linguistic regularities found in the order of acquisition of similar spatial terms, it was believed that the concept was acquired first, triggering the child’s search for a
linguistic term that would fit that particular concept. Recently, however, researchers like Bowerman and Choi (2001) have pointed out that crosslinguistic variation is much more important than believed in the eighties, some
languages not having a linguistic means to express the presumedly “basic”
concepts like containment. These facts make it highly unlikely that underlying
concepts alone drive the acquisition of spatial expressions. Irrespective of the
driving force behind the acquisition of the linguistic forms, children by the age
of four have usually acquired a minimal set of the spatial expressions available
in their language. Consequently, the acquisition of forms should not be a problem for our L1 learners either. Note that even though the studies I have just
discussed focus on the acquisition of prepositions, further studies by Slobin
(1991) show that the acquisition of the verbal variation and the resulting differences in utterance and discourse organisation, are acquired by children from
a very young age on in language-specific ways, such that their linguistic productions correspond remarkably well to the target language input.
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Where children have thus been claimed to be highly sensitive to the target
language input, and to structure space from early on as their mother tongue
requires, we propose that for adult second language learners this capacity will
pose problems. Languages being as varied as they are, it seems obvious that
adults will need time to adjust to the target language system, especially if the
system differs significantly from the source language.
If we have a look at those differences, we find that Chinese learners of
German or English will find a typologically related language as far as the expression of space is concerned, in that all three languages, according to Talmy,
are satellite-framed. In contrast, Chinese learners of French will have to adjust
to the typologically different French verb-framed system. In concreto, these
differences may involve the following: Speakers of a satellite-framed language
might be able to provide more spatial information (through extensive packaging) whereas speakers of a verb-framed language might have to make choices
about what information to give, or divide information over several clauses in
discourse. On the one hand, Chinese learning French may thus occasionally
want to cluster more information than habitually found in the French native
speaker. On the other hand, satellite-framed languages, producing more complex spatial constellations on the utterance level (compare (4) and (5) above),
may present the learner with an overwhelming task of having to find a way to
match the variety of linguistic means with the corresponding concepts. Moreover, satellites coming in rather different types across languages, this may
provide an additional acquisitional problem.
Finally, the third capacity concerned the acquisition of discourse-pragmatic
principles to be used to introduce and maintain reference to space in the narrative (among others). Previous studies in this domain concentrating on reference to person have clearly shown (Hickmann 1995; Hickmann et al. 1996,
Hickmann and Hendriks 1999) that these principles are a relatively late acquisition in the child (after 7 years of age). Although children are not entirely
ignorant about the knowledge shared (or not) between listener and hearer and
other discourse pragmatic principles, it takes them a long time to acquire the
pluri-functionality of linguistic forms such that they can use them not only on
the utterance level but also to appropriately mark discourse-pragmatic principles. Studies concerning the introduction of spatial information in discourse
(Hendriks 1993; Hickmann, Roland, and Hendriks 1998) have shown that
development in L1 is even later (as compared to form).
Comparing the acquisition of discourse-pragmatic principles of L1 and L2
learners, starting with the hypothesis that L2 learners have already acquired
this capacity, the results show that adult learners do not follow the same acquisitional path as the children. As far as the distinction between new and
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119
given information is concerned, they tend to make such a distinction from the
lowest level of proficiency onward. However, concerning reference maintenance, these adult learners do not always react as expected, and use more explicit forms for maintenance than the native adult speakers in some languages
(Hendriks and Hickmann 1998; Hendriks 1998; Hendriks 2002).
In this study, we are dealing with Chinese native speakers learning European languages. As mentioned previously, Chinese is a discourse-oriented
language, which entails a higher proportion of zero forms than found in subject-oriented languages. Thus, although the universal rule
less known referent –> more explicit form
better known referent –> less explicit form
is valid in all four languages, language-specific differences interfere here, and
the level of explicitness is bound to differ considerably between Chinese on
the one hand and the European languages on the other. This has been shown
true for reference to person. In this paper we will investigate if similar patterns
occur with reference to space, that is, in reference to Grounds.
Given previous studies, we start out with the following hypotheses:
Cross-linguistic matters:
In the native adult data we expect to find
1. a sufficiently elaborate amount of spatial information, structured in such a
way that it also provides a spatial setting, and is marked as new information.
2. An organisation which will be language-specific to the extent that it can be
explained by the variation of linguistic means available for reference to
space in the four target languages.
3. A level of explicitness sufficient for good understanding, the level varying
from one language to the other given the available linguistic means.
Age related matters:
1. We expect children and adults both to have matured as far as spatial conceptualisation is concerned.
2. We expect children not to have any problems with the mapping of language-specific means onto spatial concepts. However, given the crosslinguistic differences discussed above, and the possible influence of the L1
on the acquisition of the L2, we have to test at least the assumption that
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adult L2 learners will have problems.
3. With respect to the third capacity, we expect to find development in the L1
data, but not in the L2 data, except maybe for reference maintenance
(where cross-linguistic differences might influence the acquisition process
in the L2).
4. Method and Data
The materials used to elicit the narratives consist of two picture sequences, a
CAT and a HORSE story, of which we will only use the CAT story data in
this particular paper (see appendix I). In order to ensure the absence of mutual
knowledge, learners were confronted with the stories for the first time in the
presence of a naive and unfamiliar interlocutor. In the case of the child data,
two adult experimenters were present. One of them served as the naive interlocutor, while the other gave the instructions. The child was first asked
to blindfold the interlocutor and to make sure she could not see. This procedure was meant to discourage the child from relying on deictically available
information. When the child had blindfolded the interlocutor, the other adult
presented him with the first story. That adult then moved away from the scene
and let the child tell the story, without interfering with the experiment anymore. The same procedure was repeated for the second story. The order of
presentation of those stories was counterbalanced. Adult subjects were told
that a naive interlocutor would listen to a tape-recorded version of their narration, and had to be able to understand it without having access to the pictures.
The following subject groups were involved: 1. Monolingual Chinese,
French, English and German adult native speakers; 2. Monolingual Chinese,
English, French and German children in three age groups (10 children per age
group); 3. Chinese adults acquiring French (20 subjects), English (20 subjects), or German (40 subjects at four different levels of proficiency). The
monolingual data come from a larger database collected by M. Hickmann, as
discussed in Hickmann (1995), and (2003)3.
5. Results
5.1. The introduction of potential Grounds
In the following we will briefly sketch the mechanisms used by child and adult
learners for the introduction of potential spatial information in the narrative.
As mentioned before, a number of previous publications concerning L1 and
L2 acquisition have dealt with this subject4 and we will therefore limit our-
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121
selves to a summary of the findings and a brief discussion. The English L2
data discussed here have not been published before.
The analyses were all concerned with information potentially or actually
allowing protagonists, other entities and events of the CAT story to be located.
In principle, any entity can function as a Ground for a Figure. Thus, in the
following example, the dog is located with respect to the cat.
(6) While the cat was climbing up the tree, the dog came up behind him.
However, two elements in the CAT story are particularly likely to take up the
role of the Ground, the tree and the nest. Given these two potential Grounds,
this first set of analyses concentrated on those two entities. However, any
other entity (animate or inanimate) that was first mentioned in a locative role
was included in the analyses concerning the introduction of (potential)
Grounds as well. These additional entities may consist of “subparts”, “sublocations” of the already introduced items, such as branches of the tree, as in
example (7). It may also contain entirely new spaces (8), or some space differentiated but close to the original location, as in example (9).
(7)
(8)
(9)
But unfortunately she didn’t get ... to the first branch ... (e1008cat.cod)
Im Walde ... ist -- eine Familie (g1007cat.cod)
in the forest is
a
family
‘In the forest ... is a family’
et
par terre
y’a
l’
herbe. (f0509cat.cod)
and on
ground there is the grass
‘And on the ground there is grass’.
A first analysis concerned the amount of spatial information introduced in the
narratives. As far as the L1 data are concerned, it was found that in all four
languages narratives tend to get more spatially elaborate with age, until adult
age, when narratives always include at least one potential Ground. This tendency is clearest in French, where adult stories always include two or more
possible Grounds. German adults seem least concerned with giving spatial
information, in that only 60% of their narratives have two or more potential
Grounds, 40% occurring with only one potential Ground.
As far as the adult L2 data are concerned, the hypothesis is that these learners introduce this type of information from the first level of proficiency onward, given their previous experience with discourse organisation. Note furthermore that the Chinese native data suggest that speakers in this language
provide rather elaborate spatial information from 7 years onwards. If the
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source language influences the L2, as we think likely in this aspect of the narrative task, then we should expect rather elaborate spatial information overall.
The data seems to suggest that elaborateness is influenced by the target language rather than by the source language. Elaborateness is highest in French
as an L2, and lowest in German as an L2, thereby corresponding to the French
and German, rather than to the Chinese native data.
Data concerning the development in the L2 contradict our expectations of
finding elabore spatial information from the lowest level of proficiency onward. Thus, the German L2 data do show development, in that narratives at
the lowest proficiency level sometimes do not provide any spatial locations,
and in that only at the highest level the learners of German as an L2 provide
more elaborate spatial information.
Analyses concerning the appropriate marking of newness on potential
Grounds in previous studies were restricted to what Hickmann (1995) calls the
“local” marking of newness, that is, marking on the noun phrase (a noun with
an indefinite article in the European languages; nouns preceded by a numeral
and classifier in Chinese). In the L1 data there is a tendency to mark this type
of information appropriately more frequently in the adult than in the child
data, even though the developmental path is not regular and dissimilar across
languages. German adults seem less concerned with marking newness than
adults in the other three languages (cf. Hickmann, Roland, and Hendriks 1998;
Hendriks and Hickmann 1998).
In the L2 data, given that marking newness is assumed to be a more or less
universal discourse pragmatic principle, we again expected to find little development over proficiency levels, and a generally high proportion of appropriately marked entities. Data confirmed the lack of development with proficiency, but, the expectancy of high overall appropriateness of newness marking was disconfirmed in that in both English and German as an L2 it is less
frequent than in the native speaker adult data. No clear influence of either
source or target language is noticeable.
A final analysis asks how early the introduction of the spatial information
is provided in the narrative and particularly whether it occurred in the setting
of the narrative. Do narrators introduce spatial information in the so-called
setting, as story-grammars would suggest is appropriate, or do they provide
spatial information only when it cannot be avoided later in the narrative, i.e.,
the tree being mentioned only when the cat wants to climb it? Providing a
spatial setting is an indication for the acquisition of discourse organisational
principles.
A developmental progression was found in the mention of potential
Grounds early in the narrative. Thus, native adults provide information in the
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123
setting in 75% to 90% of the cases (German adults 75%; Chinese 78%; French
83% and English 88%). Native 7-year-olds in all languages are the worst providers of a spatial setting. Adult L2 learners clearly prefer to introduce spatial
information early in the story, as expected, given that it is part of the discourse
pragmatic principles. Proportions are lower than for the native speakers, however, with Chinese learning English providing 59% of the information early,
Chinese learning French 68% and Chinese learning German between 70% and
95%. Where German native adults seem least concerned with the construction
of a spatial setting, Chinese L2 learners of German seem more preoccupied
with this than Chinese learning French or English. Again, little development
over proficiency was found in the L2 data.
The conclusion of the previous range of analyses on newness marking has
to be that entities serving as Grounds, or introduced to go on serving as
Grounds later on in the narrative are not consequently marked for newness by
local means. Possible explanations of this finding include the position in the
story where the entity is introduced (setting vs. late). Thus, when the introduction takes place in the setting, the entity will more likely be appropriately
marked for newness, when introduced later, it is less likely to be marked (cf.
Hendriks 1993; Hendriks and Hickmann 1998).
Another explanation concerns the semantic role of the entities upon introduction. The entities serving as Grounds, the tree, the nest, and other inanimate entities are introduced mainly in three semantic roles. They can be first
mentioned as part of an existential construction, as in (10), in an object role, as
in (11), or in a locative role, as in (12). It was shown that, when introduced in
the first two types of roles, they are more likely to be appropriately marked for
newness, while when introduced in a locative role, they are less likely to be
appropriately marked. Both late introductions and introductions in locative
role being relatively frequent, the patterns for the introduction of spatial entities are explained.
(10) There is a tree
(11) The cat looks up and sees a nest
(12) There is a mother bird sitting on the branch of a tree
Finally, when compared with the introduction of animate entities in discourse, newness marking is less consistent in all groups (monolingual and L2)
and at all ages (4, 7, 10 and adults). Given that spatial information may be
more backgrounded in the overall organisation of a narrative, this could be an
explanation for this phenomenon.
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5.2. Maintaining reference to space
We now turn to reference maintenance, with particular attention to the following aspects. On the one hand, we will consider the acquisition by children and
adults of the language-specific means necessary to encode the spatial events
taking place in the narrative. On the other hand, we will closely examine the
explicitness of Grounds in reference maintenance. As regards the first point,
we will pay particular attention to two types of complexities found in the languages that may pose problems for the learners. The first type of complexity
concerns the amount of packaged information that can be found in a single
utterance produced by native speakers of the various languages, and by the
acquirers of those languages. Secondly, we mentioned the diversity in types of
satellites and clustering of satellites in the languages and the acquisition complexity this may involve. As Naigles et al. showed, these complexities are
interrelated in that when the packaging is simple (as in French), the predicate
tends to also be simple. In contrast, when packaging is more complex (as in
English), frequently the predicate is also more complex, involving clustering
of satellites. Both types of complexities, we feel, involve the second capacity
(finding the appropriate linguistic means). As mentioned previously, children
at the age of 4 should have acquired at least a minimum of those linguistic
means, whereas they may pose problems for the lower proficiency adult learners. The analyses concerning the explicitness of the Ground, with which we
will start in this section belong to the third type of capacity (keeping track of
spatial information for discourse cohesion reasons) and might therefore pose
problems for children rather than for adult L2 learners.
In examining the explicitness of Grounds, we will analyze not only the
forms themselves, but also the predicate and location type in which they occur, in order to find what factors influence this part of the structuring of space.
Is it learner type, language type, predicate type, or maybe a combination of all
those factors?
Once a minimum of spatial information is provided, maintaining reference
to a Ground can be more or less explicit. The different degrees of explicitness
reflect degrees of givenness, i.e., lean forms and even complete omission are
possible when reference is clear to the listener, while fuller forms are necessary otherwise. Choosing the right level of explicitness is a delicate matter.
According to the previously mentioned general discourse rules, the absence of
an explicit location after spatial information has been provided should lead the
listener to infer there is no change of location. However, it may be the case
that a new event takes place in a specific sub-location of the location already
introduced. In this case, the explicit specification of this Ground may be useful
Structuring space in discourse
125
after all. In addition, choosing the right level of explicitness interacts with
other factors, such as whether all events take place in one general location or
whether protagonists change location. Does the change of location take place
within the boundaries of the currently introduced spatial constellation or is it
functioning as the goal or source of a spatial change? In the latter case, the
utterance referring to this spatial scene may very well involve deictic predicates. All these factors therefore influence the explicitness of the forms. Forms
were grouped into three categories, ranging from more explicit to less explicit
ones:
1. Full forms: these forms consist of nominals with lexical information. In the
European languages, these are nominals with definite articles. In Chinese,
full forms consist of bare nominals or nominals preceded by a demonstrative determiner plus classifier.
2. Lean forms: in the European languages these forms consist of the deictic
expressions here and there (hier, da, ici, là), whether or not accompanied
by a preposition (darunter). Included in this group are also nominalised
place words (inside), adverbials (en bas), etc. In all these cases, forms
function as anaphoras for a Ground already mentioned in the narrative.
They all depend on context for completion of their meaning. In Chinese,
lean forms consist of nominalised place words such as litóu and of the
deictic words zhèr and nàr. Note that with deictic expressions, the exact
spatial relation (e.g., in, on, over) is not indicated whereas such a relation is
necessarily expressed in the other lean forms, such as the nominalised
place word. Cf. the difference between examples (14) and (15).
3. Zero forms or omissions. A third level of explicitness involves the complete omission of the Ground, as shown in (16) and (17) for French and
German respectively.
(14) In the middle of the room there was a table and a cat sat there.
(15) Zài fángzi li
yŏu
zhuōzi
Be-at room inside there-be table
‘There is a table in the room’
Yì-zhī
māo
zài shàngtou
One-cl cat be-at top-side
‘There’s one cat on top of it’
(16) La
mère
‘The mother
s’envole
flies away’
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Henriëtte Hendriks
(17) Und die Katze klettert
‘And the cat climbs
hoch
up’
5.2.1. Predicate and location types in utterances expressing motion and location5
In a first analysis, we make an inventory of types of predicates, i.e., dynamic
vs. static, as combined with type of location, i.e., general vs. change of location. This analysis is of importance as we will assess in further analyses how
predicate and location type influence the explicitness of Grounds. To a large
extent, the predicates chosen will be dictated by the story contents as given in
the picture sequence. For example, when the mother bird disappears from the
scene, the narrator is almost obliged to make mention of that departure, for
story-line reasons, but also for coherence reasons, given that the mother bird
re-appears in a later picture. Another factor influencing the choice of predicate
and location type are the language-specific means readily available for reference to space in the particular language spoken, and the variation in packaging
devices as discussed by Talmy. Keeping these preliminary remarks in mind,
let us now look at Figure 1. It provides an overview of predicate / location
combinations as found in the monolingual data.
The figure shows that native speaker adults most frequently used motion
predicates referring to a change of location (e.g., the dog runs away). Least
frequently used predicates are motion predicates referring to a general location
(the cat was roaming around), even though in French and English adult samples they gain importance and become more frequent than static general locations. The child data show quite some development in this area. At 4 years,
static predicates referring to general locations (e.g., the babies are in the nest)
are the preferred choice for maintaining reference to space in the three European languages, this type of predicate staying highly frequent in French even
up to 10 years old. Note that these static predicates in the child language are
mainly of an existential type (There is a dog), i.e., they acknowledge the existence of an entity in the pre-existing space, this space having been more or less
unequivocally introduced in the previous discourse.
Chinese children do not show this European developmental path. In fact,
hardly any development is found in the choice of predicate and location type
in Chinese, children at 4 years and older showing the adult preference for the
use of dynamic predicates referring to a change of location (cf. also Hickmann, Roland, and Hendriks 1998 and Hendriks and Hickmann 1998 for similar results concerning the complete database (Horse and Cat))
Structuring space in discourse
Figure 1. Overall distribution of situation type.
127
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Henriëtte Hendriks
Data of the adult Chinese L2 learners shown in Figure 2a show that the
distribution of predicate / location types reflects the target language rather than
the source language data. That is, whereas Chinese natives use very few motion predicates expressing general location overall (6%), Chinese learners tend
to use this type of predicate slightly more frequently in the various L2 interlanguages (English (15%), French (18%), and German (14%)).
Figure 2a. Overall distribution of situation type. L2 learners.
Development over proficiency levels as attested in the German L2 data
(Figure 2b) shows that adult learners, from the lowest proficiency level onward, chose their predicates “as adults” thereby reflecting both source and
target language patterns. They do not go through a stage in which they merely
establish existence of entities, which provides the under-specified spatial constellations in the child data.
5.2.2. Explicitness of Grounds
In the next analysis, we examine the explicitness of spatial information, taking
into account the factors age, language, predicate and location types.
Structuring space in discourse
129
Figure 2b. Overall distribution of situation type as a function of proficiency. L2 learners.
Figure 3 shows the proportions of full, lean and omitted Grounds as found
in the native adult data. The figure shows a difference between the Chinese
data on the one hand and data from the three European languages on the other.
The Chinese data show clearly higher proportions of omitted forms (67%)
than the European data (around 50% in all three languages). Overall, German
is slightly less explicit than the other European languages, given that in addition to omissions it uses lean forms such as darauf, dahinter (‘on there’, ‘behind there’) in 15% of the cases (vs. 8% and 7% in English and French respectively).
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Henriëtte Hendriks
1
0,8
0,6
full
lean
0,4
omit
0,2
0
English
French
German
Chinese
Figure 3. Forms used for reference maintenance: Adults
Figure 4 allows us to see the development in the L1 data. The main finding
here concerns the clear increase of explicit forms, particularly between 10
years and adult age.
Figure 5 allow us to see the interaction between predicate / location types
and explicitness of Grounds in the adult monolingual data. A number of conclusions can be drawn. First of all, comparing the data for cross-linguistics
factors, we find the following: changes of location tend to occur without an
explicit Ground; in contrast, dynamic predicates expressing a general location
tend to attract a high number of explicit Grounds, except in Chinese where
only 54% of the situations occur with an explicit Ground. Static predicates
expressing a general location attract both full and lean forms, lean forms being
more frequent in this type of situation than in any other (less clear for Chinese) (cf. Hickmann, Roland, and Hendriks 1998 for similar results concerning full database).
An in-depth look at the development in L1 reveals that the development
found in figure 4 is due to development in the predicates expressing general
locations, rather than changes of location. With the latter type of predicate /
location, children from 4 years onward use these more or less as the adults,
that is, mainly with omitted Grounds.
Structuring space in discourse
Figure 4. Forms used for reference maintenance over age.
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Henriëtte Hendriks
Forms used with dynamic change situations
1
0,8
full
lean
omit
0,6
0,4
0,2
0
English
French
German
Chinese
Forms used with dynamic general situations
1
0,8
full
lean
omit
0,6
0,4
0,2
0
English
French
German
Chinese
Forms used with static general situations
1
0,8
0,6
full
0,4
lean
omit
0,2
0
English
French
German
Chinese
Figure 5. Forms for reference maintenance as a function of situation / predicate types.
Native adults
Structuring space in discourse
133
When expressing general locations, however, children of all European languages go from an extreme implicitness at 4 years to a level of explicitness
closer to but still not equal to the adult language at 10 years, thereby approximating but not equalling the adult language. The development is very slow,
since omitted Grounds remain the most frequent up to 10 years of age. Chinese children form an exception in that they omit Grounds more frequently
even with general locations, particularly at 7 and 10 years. Given the overall
under-explicitness of the European data, we of course cannot be sure if the
pattern of form use with changes of location is indeed adult like, or if it is
rather an artifact of a general under-explicitness.
When we finally investigate the L2 data (Figure 6), we find that the uses of
forms by Chinese learners of European L2's do not vary greatly from one target language to another. The narratives in English L2 show the lowest proportion of omitted forms, narratives in French the highest proportion, German
proportions being intermediary. This results in narratives in the French learner
variety being clearly more implicit than the target language productions, the
Chinese learning German and English adapting well to target language levels
of explicitness. Looking at the distribution of forms over the various predicates, we find some more differences. Thus, dynamic predicates expressing a
change of location in English L2 are accompanied (in 10% of the cases) by
lean forms, whereas no lean forms collocate with these predicates in the native
English adults. More detailed analyses reveal that this concerns cases such as
(18) in which a deictic verb expressing a change of location into the origo is
followed by the deictic expression here, indicating the origo explicitly. Such
deictic words do not add much information about the actual location for the
listener and seem to be added more out of concern to create a fuller / more
complex predicate, rather than to give more spatial information.
(18) The cat come here
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Henriëtte Hendriks
Figure 6. Forms for reference maintenance as a function of predicate / situation type.
L2 learners.
Structuring space in discourse
135
As far as general locations are concerned, Chinese L2 learners of the three
European languages are omitting more Grounds when the verbs are dynamic
(expressing manner), thereby reflecting their source language habits, as in the
examples below in Chinese L1 and German L2 respectively. When speaking
about static locations, however, they reflect target language patterns in that
they provide more full and lean Grounds than found in the Chinese L1 data
which show a higher proportion of omitted Grounds. As such, L2 learners
seem to be reserving verbs expressing manner to talk about manner exclusively, and therefore avoid mentioning location in order not to take the attention away from the manner.
(19) Tā zài
păo
he be-at run
‘He is running’
(20) Die Katz klett (cg0125cat.cod)
the cat climb
‘The cat climb’
In sum, the types of predicate / location found in the European languages
seem very much the same, not only across languages but also across ages, that
is, dynamic predicates expressing a change of location are the most frequent in
all three languages and from 7 years on. The predicate / location type is an
important factor in the explicitness of Grounds as chosen by the speakers.
Irrespective of the language spoken, when the predicate expresses a change of
location, the Ground is mostly left implicit. This is mainly linked, as we suggested before, to the story itself which takes place around the tree. All protagonist’s movements involving changes of location are therefore from or to
the tree. Once this location is established as the origo, it can be left implicit.
Note, however, that Chinese organise their discourse in such a way that they
can rely on the setting when using less explicit forms in the body of the story.
That is, they introduce spatial information rather systematically in the setting
of the narrative. In contrast, German speakers (children and adults) seem to be
overall least concerned with spatial information, and notwithstanding the less
“careful” introduction of spatial information, they are also those who maintain
reference to space with the least explicit means, English and French speakers
being intermediary.
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Henriëtte Hendriks
5.3. Acquiring the appropriate linguistic means
5.3.1. Complexity of the predicate system in the languages concerned
When we discussed language-specific differences as occurring in the four
languages concerned here, we hinted to the fact that the four languages analysed in the paper differ significantly in the number of constructions and the
degree of complexity of the constructions overall for maintaining reference to
space. Note that complexity here concerns the actual number of lexical items
contributing to the expression of spatial information, rather than the packaging
complexity that we will be discussing below. Earlier, we suggested that this
type of complexity may pose a challenge for the learners. We hypothesised
that whereas complexity in English and German might provide L2 learners
with a less transparent system, the less complex French predicate system
might be just as challenging, in that learners might want to express information that is not normally expressed by native speakers.
Table 1 in appendix 2 gives an overview of all possible “predicate complexes” that can occur in the target languages, and their appearance in both
child L1 and adult L2 learner data.6
Concentrating on the adults, in order to assess cross-linguistic variation, we
find that the variety of predicate complexes is much more constrained in
French than in the other three languages (cf. also Hickmann, Roland, and
Hendriks 1998 for a similar discussion of the English and French L1 data). As
predicted by Talmy and Naigles et al., most predicates in this language consist
of bare verb-roots to express changes of location, and verbs accompanied by
prepositional phrases to express general locations. In contrast, speakers in the
other three languages produce quite a number of clusters of satellites, each
cluster slightly different from the next one. Thus, the English linguistic means
include predicate complexes such as (21) and (22) in which the same motion
event is referred to with a Ground.
(21) The cat climbs up the tree
V + part + Do
(22) The cat climbs up to the branch V + part + prep
As we claimed above, Germanic languages, as a result of the number of possible combinations and subtle differences in meaning encoded, are likely to
provide a less transparent system for the learner. Some constructions, however, are clearly preferred by the native speaker, such as the choice of a verb
plus verb-particle (she flew away) rather than a simple deictic verb (she left)
to refer to a change of location (29% vs. 14%). Similarly, when general loca-
Structuring space in discourse
137
tions in dynamic situations are made explicit, they tend to be direct objects (he
climbs the tree) rather than prepositional phrases (he climbs into the tree).
The German language again provides the speaker with a large variety of
constructions (more or less similar to English, except for prepositional adverbs), which is entirely exploited by the adult native speaker. Again, some
constructions are clearly preferred in the German adult data, both for the expression of changes of locations, both choices leaving the Ground implicit, as
in the other languages (verb + verb-particle, or deictic motion verb + 0).
As far as the child data is concerned, we find that, from a young age, the
French children tend to construct utterances consisting mainly of verb-roots
for expressing spatial information without any elaborations. Additional information (for example about the Ground) is very scarce, and tends to be provided in prepositional phrases rather than in object role. Children learning
English and German adapt to the large variety of structures found in the input,
so that most constructions are indeed attested from 4 years onwards, reflecting
largely similar preferences as compared to the adults. A single difference
found in English lies in the choice of prepositional phrases rather than direct
object roles for explicit Grounds with general locations in a dynamic situation.
Contrary to our expectation that Chinese learners of French might feel the
urge to come up with more complex predicates in French than the restricted
range offered in the input, we did not find a single predicate that suggests such
an attempt in French as an L2 (remember that in their native language they
have the possibility of putting verbs in serial constructions, thereby allowing
the expression of Manner, vertical direction and deixis (both Path) in one
predicate). The Chinese produce very high proportions of “simple” predicate
constructions, in which spatial information is restricted to the verb-root (a
possibility available in Chinese as well). The L2 learners of English seem no
less comfortable with the large variety of constructions in English as the L2
learners of French are with the more restricted range. They use the entire range
of constructions, with preferences that are similar to those of the native speakers. In addition, following the tendency of complex predicates in the TL, we
find some idiosyncratic constructions in the Chinese learner variety, i.e., some
form of serial verb construction, as exemplified in (23) and (24). It is only in
English that we find any attempt to produce similar constructions, not found in
French, nor German. Finally, the Chinese adults acquiring German as an L2,
again make good use of the entire range of possible constructions available in
the target language, showing a preference for the same constructions as the
adults at all proficiency levels, that is, using verb + verb-particle or deictic
motion verbs + 0 mainly for reference maintenance. A difference between
Chinese learners of German and German natives is their choice of explicit
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Henriëtte Hendriks
constructions. Germans will use direct objects, Chinese L2 learners will use
prepositional phrases.
(23) and the dog just a run just a runs-follow follow it (ce15cat.cod)
(24) he he he [cat] climb-jump-up (ce17cat.cod)
In sum, both children and adults seem to adapt without problems to the variety of predicate complexes available to express motion and location in the
target languages. Children do not construct predicate complexes that are not
found in the input. This is more or less what we expected, given that predicate
complexity, we feel, is part of the second capacity that children have mastered
by the age of four. Adult L2 learners, however, also adjust remarkably well to
all three languages. It is interesting to see that they do not produce very complex predicates in French, this target language itself being simple in structure.
On the other hand, the English language suggests to Chinese learners that it
allows more flexibility, making them add complexity to predicates where it is
not found in the L1 (adding the deictic expression here to the deictic verb
come for example) and attempting (even though infrequently) a Chinese
predicate complex, the serial verb construction, as shown in examples (23) and
(24) above. We would not want to conclude that English or German target
languages are not transparent enough to cope with for the L2 learner, but
rather that they provide such a large variety of predicate complexes that the L2
learner feels it is possible to add one more complex.
5.3.2. Complexity in terms of packaging
A final analysis concerning the second capacity involved in the acquisition of
reference to space in L1 and L2 deals with language-specific packaging. For
the L1 data, we will rely on the findings by Hickmann, Roland, and Hendriks
(1998). In this paper, Hickmann et al. compare the development of packaging
in English and French, and as such provide the comparison of the acquisition
of two typologically different languages, a Romance and a Germanic language
(for other languages, cf. Hickmann 2003). Their findings confirm Talmy’s and
Slobin and Hoiting’s description of the typological differences in the native
adult data. They furthermore suggest that there is very little development in
this domain after 4 years of age. Children seem to be packaging information as
in the target language, French children using large quantities of predicates that
express Path only or Manner only, English children using predicates which
Structuring space in discourse
139
express mostly a combination of packaged information: manner and deixis,
manner and direction, etc.
In order to assess the complexity of packaging in the various L1 languages,
and in their acquisition as L2, Table 2 (see appendix 2) shows the pattern of
packaging for the native adult speakers of the respective languages, and the
patterns as followed by the Chinese learners of English, French and German.
The table shows the following results: In terms of simple vs. complex packaging, the present data show that in French, packaging is simplest (75%), and in
German packaging is most complex (only 48% of predicates packages just one
element), English being intermediary (55% of packaging is simple).
L2 learners seem to follow these tendencies in complexity of packaging.
Thus, French adults use 75% of simple packaged predicates, L2 French 90%.
Where packaging is most complex (German, 50%), it is in the L2 as well, but
note that this tendency is more pronounced at the lower level of proficiency
than at the highest level of proficiency.
Talmy proposes that, motion excluded, Path is the most basic part of a motion event. If this is indeed the case, we should expect to find Path rather than
Manner when packaging is simple. In French this is indeed the case, and simple packaging expresses mainly Path information (DX or DIR) (65%). A
similar tendency is found for German (44%). English is the only language
which relatively frequently provides simple packaging of Manner (21%). For
path not to be expressed at all is extremely rare in German (4%), less rare in
French (10%) and most common in English (21%). In sum, it would seem that
English concentrates more frequently on Manner only than the other two languages, and is most liberal as concerns the coding of Path in the sense that one
finds the highest proportion of motion verbs that do not express path at all.
The above analyses concerning predicate complexity and packaging thus
seem to show that adult L2 learners handle such complexities very well and
adjust to the target language system without much trouble. When one looks at
the actual narratives, however, one feels that some important differences between narratives created by adult learners and native speakers do exist nevertheless. It is for this reason that the following more qualitative section is
added.
One observation that can be made on the basis of Table 2 is that in all
learner varieties, the packaging of DX alone (simple packaging) is larger than
in the native speaker data. Verb roots in this category are mainly come and go
in English, gehen and kommen in German and in French it includes verbs such
as venir, aller, partir, sortir, and revenir. These verbs express what motion is
most basically about, the coming and going of protagonists. In many cases
they are used by the learners instead of verbs that additionally express manner.
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Henriëtte Hendriks
If one takes, for example, the event of the dog arriving on the scene (pic. 4),
the native speakers tend to frequently use predicates like walk up behind, walk
up to, whereas the L2 learners prefer the predicates come, come along, come
by. Again, in the situation of the mother bird flying away (pic. 2), native
speakers may use fly away, fly off, take flight, whereas L2 learners may also
use go away, go out or go somewhere else. A rather extreme example of a
story following such a simplification strategy is given in (25) below. That this
strategy is to some extent related to the lower level of proficiency of the L2
speaker can be nicely shown in example (26) of a German L2 learner of the
highest proficiency level, who starts out using a less fully packaged verb,
weggehen (Path only), to then replace this verb by the verb wegfliegen (Path
and Manner).
(25) [...] And eh the baby were very hungry (laughs) I’ll go whether I have
some food. Mother said “okay I’m going to catch some food for the babies”. And the cat was coming. The cat was very naughty. There’s three
baby that looks very funny. I want to ask them to come down. He talk to
the to to to the swallow: “Shall I come and take you down to the
ground?” [...] and he want to climb over the tree and go their nest to
come down and he was climbing and climbing when dog come. “If you
don’t move down, the baby it will broken [...] (ce11cat.cod)
(26) Ja
dann geht da
fliegen dann die Vogelmutter weg
yes then goes there fly
then the birdmother away
‘Yes, then goes hm -- there flies hm the motherbird
away’.(cg13cat.cod/proficiency level IV)
Other evidence for a simplification of packaging can be found in the linguistic
rendering of the two causative situations occurring with the dog and the cat
(dog pulling cat down (pic. 5) and dog chasing cat away (pic. 6)). English
native speakers tend to refer to this situation with verbs such as scare away,
frighten away, pull down, which express the dog’s activity and the causative
relation between the dog’s and the cat’s actions. German adults follow a similar strategy, both languages providing readily available means to do so. French
adults choose again to encode all this information in one utterance, even
though being forced to use two verbs: faire fuir (‘make flee’), since expressions like chasser le chat (‘chase the cat’) do not express the leaving of the
cat. L2 learners of all three languages less frequently package all this information in one utterance. They more often opt for a solution in which the cat is the
agent, resulting in renderings of the event as: and the cat ran away; the cat
jumped down the tree. When L2 learners do attempt to package all motion
Structuring space in discourse
141
relevant information of that situation, this is what makes them use the resultative verb construction exemplified in examples (23) and (24) above.
Finally, whereas we sometimes find this use of simple packaged verbs
rather than complex packaged verbs in the L2 learner data, we also find the
opposite way of dealing with the Germanic languages. When we look at the
climbing situation, then English native adults are very consistent in their
choice of predicates: we find climb the tree, climb up the tree and get up the
tree. An inventory of the L2 learner list of predicates used in this situation
gives us: climb the tree, climb up the tree, climb on the tree, climb over the
tree, jump the tree, jump up the tree, across the tree7, and finally climb-jumpup. Similar findings can be reported for Chinese learning German but not for
Chinese learning French. This result seems to suggest that the clustering of
information in the Germanic languages is slightly less transparent through its
wealth, and that, although the Chinese can detect the preferred predicate complex (verb + verb-particle), it is harder for them to detect the preferred verb
root and particle used by the native speakers.
6. Discussion
The goal of this paper was to get an insight in the structuring of space in discourse by native speakers and child L1 and adult L2 learners. Two lines of
questions guided this study: 1) questions regarding the universality and language-specificity of reference to space and its structuring in discourse; 2)
questions regarding age related aspects influencing the acquisition of reference
of space and its structuring in discourse.
The combination of reference to space and discourse organisation creates
an interesting field of tension between the language-specific and the universal.
The spatial situation surrounding speakers may be regarded as more or less
universal, leading to the question of the universality of its conceptualisation.
The encoding of spatial events cross-linguistically turns out to be highly language-specific, though. Similarly, when structured for discourse, reference to
space will have to follow discourse pragmatic principles which, in turn, are
considered more or less universal. We thus find ourselves in a domain which
is tightly linked to universal principles (spatial and communicative situation)
but is known to be expressed in highly language-specific ways. The question
resulting from this is: How much cross-linguistic variation are we likely to
find given the universality of the underlying conceptual and organisational
principles?
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Henriëtte Hendriks
The age related aspect ought to allow us to better differentiate between the
universal and the language-specific. The particular hypothesis is that in L2 no
development should occur regarding universal principles (in contrast to L1
acquisition), because learners have already acquired these principles for the
first language. Acquisition should be constrained to the language specificmeans for reference to space.
6.1. Cross-linguistic variation
In the introduction of this paper we proposed that whereas a narrative contains
information about person, time, events and space, it relies on the temporal
domain for its overall organisation. Spatial information as such does therefore
not directly contribute to answering the Quaestio, and can be considered as
peripheral. This probably explains why narratives without any explicit spatial
information can still be coherent and cohesive. Still, we do expect an adult, in
a situation of no mutual knowledge, to provide the listener with a minimum of
spatial anchoring.
Results show that across languages adults indeed seem to pay attention to
the introduction or setting of a spatial frame. They always produce at least one
spatial entity that can function as a Ground. Adults also tend to introduce information in the setting of the story rather systematically. And, although less
frequently locally marked than reference to person, spatial information is
marked for newness in more than 50% of the cases. German adults form the
one exception to this pattern. They seem less concerned with the introduction
of Grounds in that they are less elaborate in their spatial anchoring, less systematic in their placement of spatial information, and in their marking of newness than adults in French, English and Chinese.
Moving on to reference maintenance, we find that once spatial information
has been introduced, most following events involve “changes of location” in
all four languages. As we observed before, this is mostly a result of the story
contents in which frequent changes of location take place. General locations
are most frequently referred to by static verbs in Chinese, and by both static
and motion verbs in English and German. When general locations are expressed by motion verbs, manner is expressed as well. In French, given that
changes of location require a verb packaging path rather than manner, only
motion situations with general locations allow these speakers to inform us
about manner, which probably explains the higher proportion of this type of
predicate in this group overall.
Structuring space in discourse
143
In reference maintenance, we are expecting fewer explicit forms to occur,
and indeed in all four languages omitted Grounds form the highest proportions. We find a clear cross-linguistic difference, though, in that Chinese construct narratives with clearly more implicit reference to Grounds than the
European languages. This finding corresponds to the more general tendency in
Chinese to allow zero forms in reference maintenance and was therefore expected. When comparing within the European languages, German uses slightly
fewer full forms and more lean forms than English and French narrators. The
kind of predicates used clearly have an influence on the Ground being explicitly mentioned or not, again following more or less universal trends. In all four
languages, changes of location appear mostly without explicit reference to the
Ground. General locations in combinations with verbs of motion occur overwhelmingly with full forms in the European languages, but only 54% of these
verbs are accompanied by full forms in Chinese. With static predicates expressing general locations, French does not allow omissions at all, forms being
either lean or full, and this type of predicate attracts most lean forms overall
across languages. Chinese, again, is the least explicit language with this predicate.
The above results seem to confirm that structuring space on a discourse
level is guided by universal principles in that all narratives provide spatial
information, provide it preferentially early in the narrative and mark discourse
status. However, languages do this more or less consistently, Chinese providing new information in the most elaborate way and earliest in the narrative,
relying on discourse (omitting Grounds) in the narrative episode. At the other
end of the cline, German adults overall seem less concerned with spatial information. Whereas the difference between Chinese and the Indo-European
languages can readily be explained by previously discussed typological differences (topic oriented / subject-oriented, zero licencing, etc.), the differences
between German and the other three languages cannot be so easily explained
on the basis of available linguistic means. Note, however, that in Hendriks
1993, we found similar patterns for Dutch adults. We then suggested that the
lean forms available in that language (forms like dahinter ‘behind there’
which are less explicit and highly frequent in that language) might allow the
speaker to refer to space more frequently in an overall less explicit but no less
informative way. Another possible explanation is offered by Carroll and von
Stutterheim, who suggest that German spatial information is less structured
around objects, and more structured deictically, thereby allowing for less explicit spatial information.
When looking at the language-specific means used to realize reference to
space, i.e., the means and ways to package and the choice of predicate com-
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Henriëtte Hendriks
plexity, the differences in the four languages become very clear. Thus, even
though the structuring of space on the discourse organisational level is similar,
the linguistic means used are very different. Predicate structure is rather complex in English, and German, as predicted by Slobin, Naigles et al., among
others, but not complex at all in French. Similarly, packaging is simple in
French, and most complex in German.
6.2. Age related aspects
How is this complex system acquired by child L1 and adult L2 learners? Starting with the children we find that across languages, talking about space in a
narrative is clearly not a priority at 4 years. Although very few stories contain
no introductions of Grounds at all, a good number of stories at that age only
provide the listener with one possible spatial location. Children become more
preoccupied with space at different ages across languages. In English and Chinese children start creating elaborate spatial surroundings at 7 years whereas
in French spatial information does not increase until the age of 10. This finding is somewhat surprising in that French adults are most concerned with providing elaborate spatial information. In German and English children follow
the adult trend.
Children also develop in terms of placement of spatial information in the
story (setting/late). Thus, in all four languages spatial information is introduced later in the child data, and earlier (in the setting) in the adult data.
It has been shown that newness marking is a late development in children
in as far as reference to person is concerned (Hickmann et al. 1996, a.o.). We
expect therefore a similar development for the local newness marking of reference to space. The findings confirm these expectations. The appropriateness of
newness marking with these referents is lower than in the adult data in all four
languages.
Moving on to reference maintenance we found that predicates in the adult
data mainly express changes of locations. In the Chinese data, this is true at all
ages. The speakers of Chinese, from the very early age onwards thus seem to
organise their discourse such that spatial information is introduced rather early
in the narrative, after which motion is referred to when protagonists move in
and out of the set location. In the European languages, children at 4 years use
a high proportion of static general locations when narrating, and thus tend to
describe what they see more than to temporally relate the actions of the protagonists in order to construct a narrative.
Structuring space in discourse
145
Looking at the forms used for reference maintenance, the children’s proportions of omitted Grounds are very high when compared to the adult data
(80% overall in the European languages, 75% in Chinese). Looking at the
Chinese child data, one might conclude that even 4-year-olds rely on discourse
maximally in that they have set a spatial frame and are now deictically moving
their protagonists in and out of it. However, the European data contradict this
in that settings in those languages are not sufficiently elaborate to allow omitted Grounds, and under-explicitness occurs as a result (attested even at 10
years).
Chinese second language learners, rather than reproducing the elaborateness of spatial anchoring as found in their L1, adjust aptly to the level found in
the respective target languages, thereby being less elaborate in their L2 than in
the L1. When considering the place of introduction in the narrative
(early/late), some development is going on in the L2 contrary to our expectations. Where spatial information in the native adult data of all four languages
is systematically early (in the setting), this is not the case in French and English L2, but only in German L2.
The question is why does this development take place? Several possibilities
come to mind, and are probably true for different learners. Not explicitly mentioning spatial locations may be the result of a lexical deficit. It may also be
the case, however, that the cognitive load of the narrative task is too heavy for
some L2 learners. The obvious way to alleviate this task is to concentrate on
the foregrounded information, since this leaves the narrative intact, and to
“save energy” on the more peripheral information, i.e., the spatial information.
Our guess is that, whereas the second explanation may be valid for all proficiency groups, the first explanation is only valid for very early acquirers of an
L2, but this has to be verified in other ways.
In reference maintenance, Chinese L2 learners basically use similar predicate / location types as native adults, again adjusting rather closely to the target language use. Concerning the level of explicitness we conclude that, contrary to what was found for reference to person in German L2, no overexplicitation was found in any of the learner languages. In English and German L2, levels closely reflect the target language levels. In French, Chinese
L2 learners are even less explicit than the native speakers, thereby resembling
results for reference to person in this L2. The fact that French L2 data are even
less explicit than the French L1 data may be related to the fact that French
discourse-organisation as a whole seems to be closer to Chinese discourse
organisation than English and German L1 discourse organisation (cf. also
Hendriks (2002) for a similar discussion for reference to person). French L1
seems to have features of a topic-oriented language as well as a subject-
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Henriëtte Hendriks
oriented language (Lambrecht 1981). As far as space is concerned, it does
seem to be more concerned with the introduction of spatial information than
the other two European languages, whereas more implicit forms occur in reference maintenance, as in Chinese. As a result, Chinese may sense this closeness and tend to construct discourse more like the source language.
Finally, we looked at the acquisition of language specific means, and in
particular at the adaptation by child L1 and adult L2 learners to predicate and
packaging complexity. As far as packaging is concerned, earlier studies by
Hickmann et al (1996) had already shown that children adapt to the target
language system very quickly and mainly before the age of 4, reacting just like
adults in their choices of packaging after that age. Adult L2 learners similarly
seem to adapt rather well, although a closer look at the data does show some
idiosyncratic uses by L2 learners (a slight preference for predicates that package more general (deictic) motion verbs, rather than the more complex packaging of deixis with manner or cause).
Some extra attention was given in this analysis to the status of the Path.
Talmy (1991) proposes that Path is the more central information with respect
to motion, as compared to Manner and Cause. Overall, it could be shown that
simple packaging encodes Path more than Manner, and that, if L2 learners
chose to stay with simpler packaging, they tend to refer to the Path. The data
thus seem to confirm Talmy’s claim, except for the English data which allow
simple packaging of Manner.
Predicate complexity is adjusted to very well also by both children and
adults. The French native adult data show a preference for simple predicates,
and this is what one finds in the child data as well. The Chinese L2 learners
know simple predicates in their source language but also know quite a range
of more complex predicates. Faced with the particular target language input,
however, they adapt without any problem and use simple predicates mainly
(even more frequently than the French natives). Would one be looking at this
source-target language pair only, one might say that of course simple predicates are simpler to use. If it were indeed an L2 learner strategy to stick to the
provided simpler predicates, we ought to find the same results in English and
German L2. But we do not. Where English and German L1 predicates are
overall more complex, Chinese learners again adapt. In English, they even add
to the complexity by using (even though infrequently) idiosyncratic resultative verb constructions. Such complex constructions are not at all found in
French L2. Note also, that they occur in a context that is, packaging-wise,
complex (causative situations). It is possible that precisely this complexity
pushes the learner to be creative and to strive for a more complete linguistic
rendering of the situation. At his present level, he choses for a idiosyncratic
Structuring space in discourse
147
means, but similar situations may push him to develop further and acquire the
target-language specific means.
We started this paper arguing that the construction of an adequate spatial
surrounding for events involves three capacities: cognitively representing spatial constellations, finding appropriate linguistic means to express those spatial
constellations, and keeping track of the spatial information across utterances in
order for the narrative to be coherent with respect to the spatial domain. We
made the assumption that the first capacity has been acquired by both child L1
and adult L2 learners and should not pose any problems in the experiment,
that the second capacity might be problematic for L2 learners but should have
been acquired already by 4-year-old children, and that the third capacity,
which is linked to universal pragmatic principles, ought to present no problems for adult L2 learners, but should be problematic for child L1 learners.
There exists a link between language-specific means that influence importantly on the utterance level, and are hard to acquire for the adult learner, and
universal principles that operate more on a discourse level, and present a problem for the child L1 learner. The fact that language-specific means are used to
create universally coherent discourse moreover presents us with an interesting
interaction between those two forces guiding language acquisition, the universal and the language-specific.
Our data shows this interaction of the two forces already in the native
speaker data, in that, even though the four languages under study have very
different language-specific means to encode space, they closely follow universal discourse pragmatic principles in their organisation of space. Depending on
what aspect one studies, one may therefore have the feeling that the languages
work in a very similar way (discourse aspects) or very differently (spatial encoding).
As predicted, children take a long time to acquire the structuring of space
in discourse, and even the 10-year-olds do not seem to have made this an important part of their narratives. Clearly, constructing discourse is a huge multifaceted task and they can only concentrate on some of the encoded domains.
Since spatial information is more peripheral in a narrative, it is the domain that
is affected. However, children are very comfortable with the language-specific
means available to them for reference to space from 4-years onwards.
Against our expectations, adult L2 learners also have some problems with
the structuring of space on the discourse level. We feel that the same explanation can be used in this case as for the child L1 data, that is, too many domains
have to be taken into account at the same time, and the narrators pay less attention to space than to time and person. As a result, they do not show overexplicitation. As far as the language-specific means are concerned, one could
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Henriëtte Hendriks
say that when a target language shows a preference for certain means / constructions, the L2 learner will be sensitive to these tendencies, and will in
some cases even “exaggerate” them, thereby sounding very close to the target
on the one hand, but somewhat foreign on the other hand.
Notes
1. I would like to thank M. Brala, M. Hickmann and T. Parodi for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
2. This paper is meant as an overview of work on reference to space by the author
within the scope of the Structure of learner variety project. A number of previous
papers have already dealt with structuring space in discourse (Hendriks 1993 for
Chinese and Dutch L1; Hendriks 1998a for German and Chinese L1 and L2;
Hendriks 1998b for French L2; Hendriks and Hickmann 1998 for German and
Chinese L1 and L2; Hickmann, Roland, and Hendriks 1998 for French and English
L1). In those papers, most of the emphasis was on the introduction of spatial information, and a comparison of the mechanisms with those for the introduction of
other types of information (reference to person and objects). In this paper, we will
therefore only briefly deal with referent introductions, and refer to the earlier papers when appropriate. Note, however, that data sets in those papers did not involve all three target languages, but in contrast did involve data based on another
story (the HORSE story). The choice made here to deal with data of just one story
will allow a more overall picture concerning cross-linguistic and age influences,
even though it may miss out on some other influencing factors.
3. I’m very grateful to Maya Hickmann for allowing me to use the monolingual database.
4. Cf. Footnote 2.
5. The analyses below exclude all utterances of the narrative that do not convey any
information about space, i.e., utterances without any motion, spatial static or posture verbs and without any spatial locations.
6. When the form is attested at all, it is marked by a cross, thereby showing the range
of forms that a particular group of speakers use. The most frequent forms (over
10% of the total number of forms) are additionally marked by a circle around the
cross, allowing us to see if all groups of speakers have the same preferences for a
particular form.
7. Across seems to be used as a verbal element in this example.
References
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2001 Shaping meanings for language: universal and language specific in the acquisition of spatial semantic categories. In: Melissa Bowerman and Stephen
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1998 Reference to person and space in narrative discourse: a comparison of adult
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Hendriks, Henriëtte and Maya Hickmann
1998 Référence spatial et cohésion du discours: acquisition de la langue par
l’enfant et par l’adulte. In: Mercé Pujol Berché, Lucy Nussbaum, and Miquel Llobera (eds.), Adquisición de lenguas extranjeras: Perspectivas actuales en europa, 151-163. Madrid: Edelsa.
Hickmann, Maya, Henriëtte Hendriks, Françoise Roland and James Liang
1996 The marking of new information in children’s narratives: a comparison of
English, French, german and Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language 23: 591-619.
Hickmann, Maya, Françoise Roland and Henriëtte Hendriks
1998 Référence spatiale dans les récits d’enfants français: perspective interlangues. Langue Française 118: 104-123.
Johnston, Judith and Dan Slobin
1979 The development of locative expressions in English, Italian, Serbo-Croat
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Klein, Wolfgang and Christiane von Stutterheim
1987 Quaestio und referentielle Bewegung in Erzählungen. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183.
Mandler, Jean and Nancy Johnson
1977 Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and story recall. Cognitive
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Naigles, Letitia, Ann Eisenberg, Edward Kako, Melissa Highter, and Nancy McGraw
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1973 Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In: Charles Ferguson and Dan Slobin (eds.), Studies of Child Development, 175-211. New
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1982 The definition of a story. Journal of Pragmatics 6: 487-507.
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Structuring space in discourse
151
Appendix I
Description of the picture sequences
The cat story
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
There is a nest on the branch of a tree with three baby birds in the nest and a
moter bird standing on the nest.
A cat has arrived at the bottom of the tree and is looking at the nest. The
mother bird is flying away.
The cat is sitting down, still looking at the nest.
The cat is climbing up the tree. A dog appears in the background.
The cat has reached the nest. The dog has grabbed it by the tail. The mother
bird is coming back to the nest, holding a worm in its beak.
The mother bird is back in the nest. The dog is chasing the cat away.
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Henriëtte Hendriks
Appendix II
Structuring space in discourse
153
154
Henriëtte Hendriks
Structuring space in discourse
Table 2. Packaging in adult L1 and L2 acquisition
French L1
28 (57%)
4 (8%)
4 (8%)
1 (2%)
37 (75%)
German L1
20 (42%)
1 (2%)
2 (4%)
-23 (48%)
7 (14%)
3 (6%)
-2 (4%)
-12 (24%)
4 (8%)
14 (30%)
-2 (4%)
4 (8%)
24 (50%)
English L2
French L2
65 (45%)
7 (5%)
17 (12%)
-89 (62%)
75 (75%)
9 (9%)
5 (5%)
1 (1%)
90 (90%)
German L2
Level I
27 (47%)
2 (3%)
3 (5%)
1 (2%)
33 (57%)
Level IV
36 (53%)
1 (1%)
2 (3%)
1 (1%)
40 (59%)
MAN:DIR 16 (11%)
MAN:DX 22 (15%)
DIR:DX
8 (5%)
DIR:CSE
8 (5%)
DX:CSE
2 (1%)
Tot. Compl. 56 (38%)
9 (9%)
1 (1%)
---10 (10%)
6 (10%)
16 (28%)
1 (2%)
2 (3%)
-25 (43%)
9 (13%)
15 (22%)
1 (1%)
2 (3%)
1 (1%)
28 (40%)
DX
DIR
MAN
CSE
Tot. simple
English L1
23 (33%)
1 (1%)
15 (21%)
-39 (55%)
MAN:DIR 6 (9%)
MAN:DX 11 (16%)
DIR:DX
-DIR:CSE
5 (7%)
DX:CSE
9 (13%)
Tot. Compl. 31 (45%)
DX
DIR
MAN
CSE
Tot. simple
155
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Henriëtte Hendriks
DIESE SEITE KANN WEG!!!!!!
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
I would like to thank M. Brala, M. Hickmann and T. Parodi for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
This paper is meant as an overview of work on reference to space by the author within the scope of the Structure of learner variety project. A number of previous papers have already dealt with structuring space in discourse (Hendriks 1993 for Chinese and Dutch L1; Hendriks 1998a for German and Chinese L1 and L2; Hendriks 1998b for French L2; Hendriks and Hickmann 1998 for German and Chinese L1 and L2; Hickmann, Roland, and Hendriks 1998 for French and English L1). In those papers, most of the emphasis was on the introduction of spatial information, and a comparison of the mechanisms with those for the introduction of other types of information (reference to person and objects). In this paper, we will therefore only briefly deal with referent introductions, and refer to the earlier papers when appropriate. Note, however, that data sets in those papers did not involve allthree target languages, but in
contrast did involve data based on another story (the HORSE story). The choice made here to deal with data of just one story will allow a more overall picture concerning cross-linguistic and age influences, even though it may miss out on some other influencing factors.
I’m very grateful to Maya Hickmann for allowing me to use the monolingual database.
Cf. Footnote 2.
The analyses below exclude all utterances of the narrative that do not convey any information about space, i.e., utterances without any motion, spatial static or posture verbs and without any spatial locations.
When the form is attested at all, it is marked by a cross, thereby showing the range of forms that a particular group of speakers use. The most frequent forms (over 10% of the total number of forms) are additionally marked by a circle around the cross, allowing us to see if all groups of speakers have the same preferences for a particular form.
Across seems to be used as a verbal element in this example.