12. Caused motion events across languages and learner types

The present chapter shares the interest of preceding contributions in the consequences of cross-linguistic diversity for language acquisition. We explore the implications of Talmy’s motion event typology (see also Luk and Vidaković, this volume) for bilingual first and adult second language acquisition. In line with previous contributions, we address the role of typological and general cognitive factors, with a particular focus on cross-linguistic interactions (see also Chan et al. and Saddour, this volume). A bidirectional production experiment indicated that bilingual children’s motion descriptions display parallels both with monolinguals and second language learners. Unidirectional cross-linguistic interactions suggest that typological properties affect online production strategies in both acquisition situations. Finally, we discuss implications for the dynamics of event processing in bilingualism.