French-Dutch bilinguals do not maintain obligatory semantic distinctions: Evidence from placement verbs
Författare
Summary, in English
It is often said that bilinguals are not the sum of two monolinguals but that bilingual systems represent a third pattern. This study explores the exact nature of this pattern. We ask whether there is evidence of a merged system when one language makes an obligatory distinction that the other one does not, namely in the case of placement verbs in French and Dutch, and whether such a merged system is realised as a more general or a more specific system. The results show that in elicited descriptions Belgian French-Dutch bilinguals drop one of the categories in one of the languages, resulting in a more general semantic system in comparison with the non-contact variety. They do not uphold the obligatory distinction in the verb nor elsewhere despite its communicative relevance. This raises important questions regarding how widespread these differences are and what drives these patterns.
Avdelning/ar
- Allmän språkvetenskap
- Language Acquisition
- Humanistlaboratoriet
- eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
Publiceringsår
2014
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
22-37
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
Volym
17
Issue
1
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Cambridge University Press
Ämne
- General Language Studies and Linguistics
Nyckelord
- bilingualism
- convergence
- Dutch
- French
- placement
- caused motion
Status
Published
Projekt
- Thinking in Time: Cognition, Communication and Learning
Forskningsgrupp
- Language Acquisition
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1366-7289