Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts (MA)
Major/Program
Linguistics
First Advisor's Name
Dr. Virginia Mueller Gathercole
Date of Defense
3-27-2014
Abstract
This investigation focused on the treatment of English deictic verbs of motion by Spanish-English bilinguals in Miami. Although English and Spanish share significant overlap of the spatial deixis system, they diverge in important aspects. It is not known how these verbs are processed by bilinguals. Thus, this study examined Spanish-English bilinguals’ interpretation of the verbs come, go, bring, and take in English.
Forty-five monolingual English speakers and Spanish-English bilinguals participated. Participants were asked to watch video clips depicting motion events and to judge the acceptability of accompanying narrations spoken by the actors in the videos.
Analyses showed that, in general, monolinguals and bilinguals patterned similarly across the deictic verbs come, bring, go and take. However, they did differ in relation to acceptability of word order for verbal objects. Also, bring was highly accepted by all language groups across all goal paths, possibly suggesting an innovation in its use.
Identifier
FI14040892
Recommended Citation
Verde, Erica, "Investigating Miami English-Spanish Bilinguals' Treatment of English Deictic Verbs of Motion" (2014). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1229.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1229
Included in
English Language and Literature Commons, First and Second Language Acquisition Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons
Rights Statement
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).