Research in linguistics has revealed striking differences in how languages represent motion events. At least two types of psycholinguistic studies have begun to explore the implications of this linguistic diversity, showing the impact of language-specific factors on language acquisition in different types of learners as well as on language pathology, particularly aphasia. The present overview discusses both sets of studies, focusing on comparisons between French and English. We begin with a brief overview of these two language systems, showing that they have different ways of distributing information between verb roots and adjuncts (e.g., particles, prefixes, morphology). We then illustrate the implications for language acquisition, as well as for aphasia. In our final remarks, we highlight how comparisons across different languages and types of speakers can shed light on the influence of language-specific factors on speakers' expressions of space, and outline directions for future research.