Learning to Express Motion Events in Ewe
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Date
2013-07
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University of Ghana
Abstract
The focus of this thesis is to examine Ewe speakers’ linguistic
organization of motion events and how such language patterns develop in Ewe-
speaking children. The work is situated within Talmy’s Theory of Lexicalization
Patterns (which examines the conceptual structure of motion events as well as
the typological patterns in which this conceptual structure is parceled out in
languages), Slobin’s Thinking-for-Speaking Hypothesis (which explores how
particular typological properties will lead Ewe children to learn a particular way
of thinking-for-speaking) and the Cognitive and Language-Specific Hypotheses.
The cognitive hypothesis claims that children come to the task of language
learning with a pre-existent cognitive representation of the world. In contrast,
the Language-specific hypothesis claims that the language learning process is
often under the semantic structure of the input language and that such influence
begins from the very beginnings of language acquisition.
Elicited production tasks with fifty 3-, 4-, 5-, 7- and 9 year olds (10
participants in each age group) as well as a group of 10 adults were carried out
using three elicitation tools developed for research into motion expression.
Findings of the study support the claim that typological properties
constrain how speakers of Ewe talk about motion from early acquisition phases
to adulthood. At age three, Ewe-speaking children used more path verbs than
manner verbs in the expression of motion events. From four years onwards, they
used the typical SVC constructions, a combination of Manner and Path verbs, to
express motion events. They also mentioned only one piece of information about
ground of movement in individual clauses. The children neither showed any
ability at describing the physical setting in which movement takes place (until 9
years of age) nor fully develop the narrative habit of describing complex motion
events. Ewe-speaking children’s performance in motion event description has
been found to grow gradually with increasing age and adult performance is
always more extensive than that of children at any age. These results also suggest
that while Ewe children follow equipollently-framed structural pattern when
talking about motion events at a tender age of three, equipollently-framed
discourse characteristics in Ewe-speaking children do not achieve maturity until
adulthood.
The thesis provides evidence for some possible early cognitive tendencies
and the place of language specific hypothesis in language development. It also
lends support to the typological categorization of Ewe within the Talmian and
Slobin’s frameworks which can be used in other comparative studies in future
research.
Description
Thesis (PhD) - University of Ghana, 2013
Keywords
Ewe, Talmy’s Theory of Lexicalization, Slobin Thinking-for-Speaking Hypothesis, Ghana