Developmental Decline in the Acquisition of Spatial Language

Abstract

We asked whether there is a developmental decline in the ability to learn the spatial terms of a second language, similar to the age-related decline in mastery of phonology and morphosyntax. Although the semantics of spatial terms may appear to be straightforwardly grounded in spatial cognition and therefore relatively simple, they are known to differ significantly across languages, packaging geometric and functional relationships in different ways, and relying on culture-specific representation of objects. Previous observations suggest that adults learning spatial semantics in a second language do face considerable difficulties (e.g., Ijaz, 1986). To explore why and how learners might find it difficult to learn spatial semantics in a second language, we asked adult native speakers of Spanish and Korean to produce and judge applicability of English spatial prepositions that describe relationships of support, containment, and vertical displacement. The age at which spatial terms were first learned in English (age of immersion) but not years of experience (length of immersion) reliably predicted participants' accuracy, with effects focused on those senses of spatial terms that rely on abstract representation of reference objects. The locus of effects was broadly similar across native Korean and Spanish speakers, suggesting that interference from the first language was not solely responsible for performance. Taken together, these findings suggest maturational constraints on receptivity to spatial semantic input and raise questions about mechanisms that spatial semantic learning may have in common with other areas of language.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This manuscript is based on research reported in Edward Munnich's doctoral dissertation. We are very grateful to the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware, Emmanuel Church in Philadelphia, the Delaware Korean UMC in Hochessin, Delaware, and the University of Delaware chapter of HOLA for their help in recruiting participants. In addition, we appreciate the meticulous work of Sylvia Gennari, America Martinez, Sunah Son, and Heejong Yi who provided translations of materials into Korean and Spanish.

Notes

¹Both Korean and Spanish have phrases that make the distinctions that English makes, but one generally does not use such phrases unless the relationship is not clear from context. By contrast, these distinctions are mandatory in English — one cannot say “the cup is on the table” if it is on a shelf above the table, nor can one say “the cup is over the table” when it makes contact with the table.

²The criterion of at least five years immersed in an English-speaking environment prior to testing was based on the results of Oyama (1978) and Patkowski (1980), who found that second language competence reaches a plateau at five years. This was also the standard used by Johnson and Newport (1989).

³There are some complexities here. For example, one can make distinctions between these positions by contrasting under and below or in some cases, on and under. For example, a lizard crawling on the bottom side of a table (Table 1b, Item 2a-Base) can be described with under, but a lizard on the floor beneath the table (Item 2a-Contrast) can be described with either under or below. The distinction between the two is not obligatory, as in on/ over.

⁴The criterion for native-like was whether the coder could imagine a native speaker giving the response, since many of our participants gave responses that one would not be surprised to hear from a native speaker. For example, for the scene with pretzels removed from a bag and placed on top of the bag, although the typical response given by English speaking informants was “on,” several non-native speakers responded “on the outside of.” This would not be a surprising description to hear from a native speaker, since pretzels are usually inside of a bag. In contrast, several non-native speakers said “over” — a native speaker might say something such as “spread out all over,” but it is difficult to imagine that a native speaker would just say “over,” so this was not considered native-like.

⁵It is possible that we found the most difficulty with in and on items because we tested more in and on items than over and under items. We do not see much reason to believe that there would have been a developmental decline for under items, regardless of how many items we included. As discussed above, none of the high error items was under items, and under did not show up as an answer to any of the high error items. As for over, we did find some evidence of difficulty as presented above, but nothing to suggest the kind of broad developmental decline we see in mastering the border between in and on. Given the broad polysemy of over as documented by Brugman (1983), it is possible that we did not include the particular instances of over that would have been particularly difficult for late learners — at least for the items we used, we are neither in a position to rule such a decline in, nor can we rule it out.

⁶Although there was an AOI effect for under items, all participants in both language groups answered at least seven out of ten under items correctly, and at least seven out of ten participants in both language groups answered each under item correctly. With these patterns in mind, we conclude that, although mastering the nuances of under in English does present difficulties for late learners, these difficulties are not profound ones, and do not center around any particular locus of under relationships.