Conceptual Restructuring in L2 Acquisition: the Influence of Reading Direction on Actants' Selection in Causal Events
Résumé
Recent studies on second language acquisition have used on-line measures to investigate the influence of L1 structures on cognition, but research on conceptual restructuring through L2 acquisition have yielded mixed results (Flecken et al. 2015, Wang & Wei 2021). However, research has mostly focused on Indo-European or East Asian languages, and expression of aspect or motion. We propose to study reference to entities of causal events in French and Syrian Arabic. Previous research have investigated the “Agent-first” preference, postulating a universal bias to choose Agents as subjects and focus attention on them when describing causal events – even if this can be modulated by syntactic priming and reading direction (Sauppe & Flecken 2021, Esaulova et al. 2020). Moreover, previous works have also shown that preferences in visual event representations are derived from reading direction and that first fixated characters are usually chosen as subjects (Gleitman et al 2007). Our study aims to investigate the influence of reading direction in the perception and representation of causal events’ actants by L1 and L2 French speakers. We wish to study the “Agent first” preference in French L1 and Syrian Arabic L1, and whether it can be modulated by the Agent’s position on the screen. It is part of a longitudinal project on conceptual restructuring in Syrian Arabic learners of French, to see if exposure to a different reading direction can affect dynamic scene perception. We collected data from 29 Syrian Arabic speakers and 22 French L1 speakers using verbalization tasks in French, and then again for the learners group in Syrian Arabic L1 after distracting tasks. Eye-tracking data were collected for both tasks. The same group of participants did the task in French L2 and Syrian Arabic L1. In each experiment, participants had to watch and narrate short videos, in which one character (Agent) hits the other (Patient) with an object. We counterbalanced the Agent’s left-right position across the videos and presented mirror versions of the stimuli to half the participants. Our two areas of interest (AOI) were the two protagonists’ faces and shoulders. In the verbalizations, we analyzed the first introduced character in the retelling and the subject of the collision predicate. Analyses show mixed results. While the analysis of collision verbs’ subjects confirms the linguistic Agent-first preference for both groups, independently of the Agent’s position, total dwell times reveal that more time is spent looking at Patients. Moreover, discourse analyses suggest no Agent-first preference, as order of introduction “Patient > Agent” is more frequent in French L1. However, this preferential order is modulated by reading direction: Agents on the left are more likely to be mentioned first in French L1. Conversely, native Arabic speakers introduce right-positioned Agents first more often in Syrian Arabic L1 but not French L2, as there is no preferential order of mention. These results suggest some conceptual restructuring that lessens the influence of a right-to-left reading bias.
Domaines
| Origine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
|---|---|
| Licence |