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Constrained communication of motion events

Exploring shared cognitive constraints in Chinese-French translation and description tasks

 | University of Cambridge
Published online: 24 April 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00218.she
Abstract
With the concept of constrained communication, which marries research directions in second language acquisition and translation studies, more attention is focused on the shared cognitive constraints with bilingual activation in learning and translating. Although many studies have examined the constrained language with corpus methods, the perspectives could be diversified with elicitation approaches from cognitive linguistics. This study explores the cognitive constraints underlying the encoding of motion events in L2 French and compares the lexicalization patterns of Chinese-French bilinguals between description and translation tasks. This study focuses on four aspects of motion encoding: verb locus, other locus, semantic density, and syntactic packaging. Findings indicate that cognitive constraints are shared between task types, with differences in the extent of variation from L1 patterns. Specifically, translation tasks demonstrate greater shifts towards L2 attunement than description tasks, highlighting the role of task demands in bilingual production.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Motion event expressions across languages
    • 2.1Talmy’s typology
    • 2.2Slobin’s thinking-for-speaking hypothesis
    • 2.3Encoding motion in Chinese
    • 2.4Encoding motion in French
  • 3.Motion event expressions in second language acquisition and translation
    • 3.1Motion event expressions in second language acquisition
    • 3.2Motion event expressions in second language translation
    • 3.3Comparing motion event expressions in second language acquisition and translation
  • 4.The framework of constrained communication
  • 5.Methods
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Tasks
    • 5.3Procedure
    • 5.4Coding
    • 5.5Analysis
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Information in the verb locus
    • 6.2Information in the OTH locus
    • 6.3Semantic density
    • 6.4Syntactic packaging
  • 7.Discussion
    • 7.1Information in the verb locus
    • 7.2Information in the OTH locus
    • 7.3Semantic density
    • 7.4Syntactic packaging
  • 8.Conclusion
  • 9.Data availability statement
  • References
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