L1 Influence on the Use of English Deictic Motion Verbs for Chinese EFL Learners and French EFL Learners

Based on Sloin’s (1996b) thinking for speaking approach, the study examines L1 influence on the use of English deictic Motion verbs for Chinese EFL learners and French EFL learners. The aim is to find out whether language learners will be influenced by the particular Thinking for Speaking acquired in L1in the process of L2 acquisition. It is revealed that there is an overuse of English deictic Motion verbs among French EFL learners due to boundary crossing constraint in French, which results from L1 transfer. On the other hand, Chinese EFL leaners benefit from positive transfer due to the similarity between L1 and L2 and their overuse of English deictic Motion verbs results from simplification. Whereas L1 influence exists among Chinese EFL learners in the use of go rather than the more target like come.

1. 1 Slobin's (1996b) "Thinking for Speaking" Hypothesis Rather than taking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its strong, extreme, or deterministic form, many now accept a weak, more moderate Whorfianism, that is, people's thinking is influenced rather than determined by language.For example, Slobin (1996b: 75) claims that "there is a special kind of thinking that is intimately tied to language, namely the thinking that is carried out, on-line, in the process of speaking."He suggests that languages influence speakers' thinking in the process of speaking, but does not claim language has any further effects on the mind beyond the moment of speaking.Slobin (1996b: 91) further proposes that a child learns particular ways of Thinking for Speaking in acquiring a native language and that "if our minds have been trained in taking particular points of view for the purposes of speaking, it is exceptionally difficult for us to be retrained."Slobin (1996b: 76) claims that "Thinking for Speaking" involves picking those characteristics of objects and events that (a) fit some conceptualisation of the event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language.For the first point, it means, when we present events or experiences in any language, we have to take a lexicalised point of view in order to fit these to the structure of the language.Since each language has its own particular grammar structure, people who speak different languages must take different lexicalised points of view.
A comparison of lexical items and the concepts they represent in Chinese and English can help to illustrate that not all concepts are equally codable in all languages.For example, the English word cousin does not reveal whether the person in question is paternal or maternal, younger or older, female or female, etc, while Chinese has a fine-grained system of kinship terms.So this information cannot easily be encoded in English, even though one can add adjectives such as "older," "younger," "female" or "male" to make these characteristics clear.Chinese people need to pay attention to such information when talking about kinship relationships because they need to select the right lexical item in the process of Thinking for Speaking.This example illustrates that languages are subjective instead of objective systems which affect our way of thinking while speaking.In other words, speakers are biased when they encode objects or events.This implies that when we verbalise our experience, we have to filter our experience through the set of options available in the particular language we speak (Berman and Slobin 1994: 611).Slobin's(1996b) Thinking for Speaking approach is largely based upon the expression of Motion events in typologically different languages-systematic and detailed comparisons of Motion event expressions in satellite-framed languages and verb-framed languages.He analyses Spanish-English translations, Spanish and English narrations elicited by the same set of pictures, and the mental images associated with narrations in each language.The distinction between verb-framed languages and satellite-framed languages exerts an influence on rhetorical styles (Slobin1996a 1997) and habitual patterns of language use (Slobin 2004).In written texts as well as orally elicited narratives, "the form and content of descriptions of journeys are heavily shaped by the typology of lexicalisation patterns" (Slobin1996a: 195).Some researches provide evidence for Slobin's (1996b) thinking for speaking.For example Allen et al. (2007) claim that influences in children's syntactic packaging of Manner and Path are both language-specific and universal.Gopnik and Choi (1990: 199) posit that children's cognitive development is influenced and motivated by their linguistic development.Özyürek and Özçalıskan (2000) support Slobin's (1996b)view and claim that English and Turkish speaking children are sensitive to the typological characteristics of the native language.This sensitivity is displayed in linguistic encodings of Motion events as well as in gestures.Similarly, Hickmann and Hendriks (2006) find the strong influence of language-specific factors on speakers in talking about location.While there are still research which question Slobin's (1996b).Thinking for Speaking.For example, Pourcel (2004) concludes that language does not play a role in the conceptualisation of Manner salience or Path salience.Gennari et al.'s (2002) findings provide evidence that linguistic descriptions guide subjects' attention to certain aspects, which affects their future judgments.On the other hand, there is no language effect after the non-linguistic encoding.In addition, there is no language effect for the memory task either after linguistic encoding or after non-linguistic encoding.A study of Motion descriptions in Japanese-English bilinguals suggests that two kinds of Thinking for Speaking tend to operate concurrently rather than separately (Tatsumi 1997).Daller et al. (2011) analyse the Motion event expressions by Turkish-German bilinguals in Germany and Turkey.The result provides evidence for the typological differences between Turkish, a verb-framed language and German, a satellite-framed language.There is a boundary-crossing constraint in Turkish while the constraint does not exist in German.

Evidence of Thinking for Speaking
To sum up, there is still no agreement on the relationship between language and thought and on Slobin's (1996b) thinking for speaking.In some cases the same author (e.g., Pourcel 2004, Pourcel 2005) reaches different conclusions in different studies.
1.3 Chinese Motion Verb 来 Lai2 "Come" and 去 Qu4 "Go" 来 lai2 "come" is a good example of a polyse1mous verb.The use of this deictic Motion verb can be categorised into three subgroups (Lee 2008).Firstly, it can be an independent single verb.Secondly, it can be used in serial verb constructions.Thirdly, it may function as a grammatical marker without Motional or deictic features, such as in (1).It is a grammatical marker because it is ungrammatical to change it into the other deictic Motion verb 去 qu4 "go", which expresses the Motion away from the speaker.By contrast, the two deictic Motion verbs are interchangeable in (2a) and (2b).下来 xia44lai2 "descend come" and 下去 xia4qu4 "descend go" are used interchangeably with opposite meanings.下来 xia44lai2 "descend come" is used after a verb to indicate the Figure's coming from a distant place to a nearer place.And 下去 xia4qu4 "descend go" means to move from a near place to a distant place.This time small dog from window on fall PFV descend come "At this time, the small dog fell down from the window." The use in serial verb constructions can be further divided two subgroups: those with Manner verbs or Path verbs and those without.When 来 lai2 "come" is used as the main verb, the syntactic structure may be either 来 lai2 "come" + NP like in (3a) or NP + 来 lai2 "come" as in (3b) (Lee 2008, examples are from the present study).This time policeman and bank staff all dash approach come help him "At this time, both the policeman and the bank staff dashed to help him." 来 lai2 "come" may immediately follow other verbs as in (4c) or alternatively be interrupted by NP/P as in (5a) or aspect markers 了 le0,着 zhe0, 过 guo4 as in (5b).One CL huge object quickly dash PFV pass come "A huge object dashed (towards him) quickly."Gao (2001: 62) points out that different from the satellites in English, satellites in Chinese can also function as independent verbs themselves.The same with 来 lai2 "come", 去 qu4 "go" can also perform three functions: Motion function, deictic function, and grammatical function.去 qu4 "go" in ( 6) is used as a grammatical marker since it does not possess Motional meaning or deictic meaning.It is used after a verb to indicate an action that will start.
Then this daddy very angrily AdvM lead own son go get even with Qu "Then the father led his son to get even with the man angrily."

L1 Influence on the Use of Deictic Motion Verbs in Chinese
Deictic Motion verbs express the direction of Motion, either towards the speaker or away from the speaker.Therefore, following Talmy (2000) and other researchers (Treffers- Daller and Tidball, 2012), deictic Motion verbs are treated separately as a specific subcategory of Path verbs in an independent subsection from non-deictic Path verbs.There are deictic Motion verbs in all these three languages under study, that is, come and go in English, 来 lai2 "come" and 去 qu4 "go" in Chinese and aller "go" and venir "come" in French.Deictic Motion verbs come, 来，andvenir express Motion toward the speaker and go, 去 andaller express Motion away from the speaker.The of deictic Motion verbs is interesting because Ho and Platt (1993) provide evidence of transfer from Chinese to Singaporean English in the use of English deictic Motion verbs.In their study of Singaporean English, Ho and Platt (1993) provide evidence for transfer of Chinese on Singaporean English in a range of structures, including serial verb constructions and the use of Motion verbs like come/go, bring/take/fetch, e.g., such a sentence in Singaporean English "We will be going to your house at six…" (Note 2) should be "We will be coming to your house at six…" in standard British English.The use of going rather than coming shows the transfer from Chinese to English in that in Chinese the action is "viewed from the position of the person who will initiate the action" (Ho and Platt 1993: 160-162).That is, viewed from the speakers' position, the speaker will go away from his position to the addressee's house in Chinese.But in English, the action is viewed from the position of the house, that is, the speaker will come to the house in this sentence.Ho and Platt (1993) emphasise the different perspectives of viewing an action by Chinese speakers and English speakers.Similarly, Treffers-Daller and Tidball (2012) find evidence of overuse of aller and venir for British learners of French.The present chapter aims to compare the use of deictic Motion verbs in Chinese L1, English L1, and learners' English.

Subjects (Note 3)
The subjectsfall into four groups.The first group includes 30 native Chinese EFL learners of non-English majors with intermediate English proficiency (IC, mean age 19).The second group consists of 30 native Chinese EFL learners of English majors with high English proficiency (HC, mean age 22).The third group is 29 native English speakers as the control group (NS, mean age 23).The fourth group is 24 French EFL learners (F, mean age 22).All subjects majoring in different subjects except HC group.Data from HC and IC were collected in China.Those from NS were collected in UK. 14 F group's data werecollected in UK and the other ten subjects' data were collected in France (Note 4).

Materials and Tasks (Note 5)
The material used is Frog goes to dinner (Mayer 1969).It is a wordless picture book of twenty-two pages full of interactions between people and the little frog.It is about a boy who goes to dinner with his family, but he does not realise that his pet frog is in his pocket.So the frog causes a lot of trouble at the restaurant.It is a book which depicts a lot of movements of the frog in the restaurant so that it provides an excellent material for the description of Motion events for every subject.
Each subject was presented with a task explanation written in English to ensure every student obtained exactly the same instructions.The subjects were informed that they were going to tell stories based on materials from Mayer (1969), and that these would be tape-recorded.The subjects were expected to tell the stories in as much detail as possible.NS and F tell the story in English.Fifteen students in HC and IC are chosen randomly to tell the story in English.Therefore, there are 28 English stories from NS (one recording is inaudible due to recording quality), 15 from HC and IC respectively and 24 from F.

Transcriptions and Coding
The stories were first tape-recorded and then transcribed by the investigator.To ensure the accuracy of the transcriptions, all these transcriptions were checked by three other native or fluent speakers of both French and English (Note 6).Then the data were transformed into CHAT format, the transcription and coding format developed by MacWhinney (2000).The results were subsequently analysed with the help of statistical tools.

Use of Deictic Motion Verbs in EE3 (English Stories of NS)
Come is used as a Motion verb with a very low frequency of six in EE3.Four subjects use it to state that the waiter comes over to deal with the problem caused by the frog in the restaurant.Two subjects state that the frog comes to the restaurant with the family.No subject uses come to describe the Motion of the frog in the restaurant, where the typical way a frog moves is expressed and emphasised.Concerning the description of the scene that the whole family and the little boy go to/arrive at the restaurant, the Path verb arrive is the most common word, with a frequency of eight followed by six tokens of go, four tokens of get and one reach.In two cases the Manner verb walk is used to describe this scene.
The total frequency of go in EE3 is 175, most of which cases are an auxiliary verb.It is a deictic Motion verb in 29 cases.When it is a deictic Motion verb, it is overwhelmingly used to express such scenes as the boy/family go out to the restaurant, the boy/family go to the waiter, the family go home, the boy goes to his room, etc.There is only one case that go is used to describe the Motion of the frog in the restaurant, as in (7).In fact, the Manner verb leap precedes it in the former clause, so that Manner is already indicated in this sentence.Similarly, in (8), Manner is expressed by the Manner adjunct flying, even though the deictic Motion verb go is used as the main verb.No subject uses go to describe the Motion of the frog into the boy's pocket.
(7) She screamed when she saw this frog and the frog leapt for it and went straight into someone's drinking glass.(NS 319) (8) The salad went flying, the fork went flying, the glass turned over, and the lady fell over too.(NS 303)

Use of Deictic Motion Verbs in EHC3 (English Stories of HC)
The total number of tokens of come in EHC3 is twenty-two.In twelve cases it is used to describe the scene in which the waiter approaches or that the family/boy come(s) to the waiter to explain the situation, where Manner is not necessarily relevant, as in ( 9). ( 9) And the waiter came in and wanted to throw this frog out.(HC 230) In addition to this, in five cases come is used to describe the Motion of the frog in the restaurant, for example, the frog comes out of the saxophone/salad/glass, etc, as in ( 10a) and (10b).In (10a), the frog's Motion is described by a deictic Motion verb come and a Manner verb jump, and in (10b), the frog's Motion is described by the deictic verb come and a Path verb fall.
(10a) Suddenly the frog came out of the horn and jumped right onto the man's hat.(HC 222) (10b) When the player was wondering why he cannot play the instrument, the frog came out and he directly fell onto the face of the player.(HC 228) There are five non-targetlike uses of come in EHC3, as the examples in (11) illustrate, where native English speakers would use go rather than come.This shows that there is an overuse of come rather than go by high level Chinese EFL learners.As is stated in Chapter one, Ho and Platt (1113: 160-162) claim that there is a transfer effect from Chinese on Singaporean English in that the action is "viewed from the position of the person who will initiate the action" in Chinese.In the present study, like they do in their native language, Chinese EFL learners take the perspective of the position of the protagonist who has just initiated the action and who is at the goal (his room) after his movement.It can be understood that the speaker takes the perspective of the goal, rather than the source.In (11c), the subject intends to express chase the frog in this situation, therefore go after is the targetlike choice.The frequency of go is 47 in EHC3.Chinese EFL learners of high level overwhelmingly use go in the following situations, such as the family/boy/frog go out to have dinner, the boy/family go to the waiter to explain, the waiter goes to the fire exit to throw out the frog, etc, which is 17 out of 47.In six cases go is used to describe the Motion of the frog in the restaurant, as in (12), in which the Manner verb jump and the deictic Motion verb go are used in different clauses of one sentence to describe the frog's Motion.Three subjects use go to describe the frog's movement into the boy's pocket, as in (13).
(12) So he quickly jumps and then went into the hole of the saxophone.(HC 227) (13) Just because the little boy didn't pay attention to the frog, then the frog quickly went into the pocket of his clothes.(HC 227) Come is used in five cases and go in six cases to describe the frog's Motion in the restaurant.Three subjects use go to describe the frog's Motion into the boy's pocket.There are five non-targetlike use of come, where native speakers would use go.
There are eleven Motion events of the family/frog going to the restaurant described by go.In six cases go describes the scene that the boy goes to his room and in four causes it is used in the family go back home.

Use of Deictic Motion Verbs in EIC (English Stories of IC)
The total number of tokens of come is 19 in EIC3.Subjects use it to describe mother or the restaurant owner's Motion after the frog causes trouble in the restaurant in two cases, as in ( 14).
(14) Neal's father was very angry with him and his mother came out.(IC 122) In addition to this, in eight cases come is used to describe the Motion of the frog in the restaurant, for example, the frog comes out of/into the saxophone/salad/glass, etc, as in (15a) and (15b).Come is most frequently used as the single Motion verb in the whole sentence, as in (15a) or occasionally there is a Manner verb in the other clauses of the same sentence, as in (15b).The frequency of go used as a deictic Motion verb is 25 in EIC3.Chinese EFL learners of intermediate level use go ten times to express such ideas as go out of the restaurant, go to the fire exit, go to the manager/waiter, etc. Go is only used twice to describe the frog's Motion in the restaurant as in the following examples ( 17) and ( 18).In both cases, there are Manner verbs in other clauses of the same sentences.More subjects use go correctly to describe the scenes such as the family/boy/frog go to the restaurant, the family go home, and the boy goes to his room, etc, whose frequencies are four, five and four respectively.In nine cases the subjects use come rather than the targetlikeword go.There are only two cases that go is used to describe the frog's Motion in the restaurant.

Use of Deictic Motion Verbs in EF (English Stories of F)
Come is used to describe that the waiter comes into the scene in three cases, in which situation Manner is not necessarily relevant.In six cases come is used to describe the Motion of the frog in the restaurant, such as the frog come to a plate, it comes out of/into the saxophone, it comes onto the saxophonist's face, etc.One subject expresses that the frog comes with the family to the restaurant.There are seven examples that subjects use come (back) home rather than go (back) home.
The frequency of go is 67 in EF3, which is the most frequently used Motion verb in this story.It is used 32 times to describe the frog's Motion in the restaurant.Four subjects use go to describe the frog's movement into the boy's pocket.Other uses of go are in the following expressions such as family/frog go (es) to the restaurant, family go back home, and the boy goes to his room, etc, which are 21, three and seven cases respectively in frequency.

Analysis and Discussion
The French EFL learners overuse the deictic Motion verb goes, while Chinese EFL learners do not have this tendency.But it should be noticed that Chinese EFL learners overusecome where the native English speakers would use go because Chinese EFL learners take the perspective of the goal of movement, rather than the source of movement as they do in their L1.
There is an overuse of go by intermediate level Chinese EFL learners and French learners.Similar overuse of deictic Motion verbs by Anglophone learners of French is found in Treffers- Daller and Tidball's research (2012), which is considered to be the result of simplification.We consider the overuse of go by Chinese EFL learners results from simplification while that of French learners is caused by transfer.The transfer can be explained by boundary-crossing constraint in French.Slobin and Hoiting (1994) propose that a "boundary-crossing constraint" exists in verb-framed languages.In Motion events, when the There are some details that need to be taken into consideration.There are some cases that Chinese EFL learners of both high level and intermediate level use deictic Motion verbs.But the frequency of the use of deictic Motion verbs by Chinese EFL learners is much lower than that of French EFL learners.Therefore, the use of deictic Motion verbs in boundary crossing expressions by Chinese EFL learners L2 productions cannot be explained by transfer because there is no such characteristic in L1 productions.It can only be explained as simplification.But the French EFL learners' use of deictic Motion verbs can be attributed to negative transfer.It can be concluded that even if there is simplification for French EFL learners, negative transfer plays a role for them.As Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008: 192) point out, most language users with different L1 backgrounds may simplify a form, pattern, or characteristic in L2, they may do this with different frequencies.
On the one hand, we find that French EFL learners' overuse of deictic Motion verbs results from the boundary constraint in L1 while the Chinese EFL learners' overuse of deictic Motion verbs result from simplification.On the other hand, we find the overuse of go rather than come, whichshows the transfer from Chinese to English.This finding is in accordance with Ho and Platt (1993).The L1 influence on the use of English deictic Motion verbs for Chinese EFL learners and French EFL learners is due to the Thinking for Speaking effect as is proposed by Slobin (1996b).

Conclusion
This study provides evidence that the French EFL learners rely more on Path verbs, especially deictic Motion verbs than Chinese EFL learners, which is due to L1 influence.On the other hand, Chinese EFL leaners benefit from positive transfer due to the similarity between L1 and L2 and their overuse of English deictic Motion verbs results from simplification.Whereas L1 influence exists among Chinese EFL learners in the use of go rather than the more target like come.It can be concluded that concerning the use of deictic Motion verbs, bothChinese EFL learners and French EFL learners are influenced by the Thinking for Speaking in L1 which is acquired in their childhood and it is hard to be restrainedin the process of L2 acquisition.The pedagogical meaning is that language learners are reminded of the similarities and differences between L1 and L2 explicitly in classroom teaching.The awareness that Thinking for Speaking in L2 is exceptionally important helps language learners to be more target-like in L2 expressions.

(
11a) Again when the boy comeinto his own room and again he is playing happily with his animals again.(HC 227) (11b) Everyone didn't say anything on the road until they come back home.(HC 222) (11c) The waiter came after the frog.(HC 222)

(
15a) When he uses his folk to had the food, a frog came out of his food.(IC 130) (15b) Suddenly a frog came out and jumped onto his face.(IC 118) The other nine examples involve the non-targetlike use of come, where native English speakers would use go rather than come, as are illustrated in examples in (16).So there is overuse of come in both groups of Chinese learners (see section 3.3.4).(16a) Hecome to the restaurant and the restaurant was beautiful.(IC 130) (16b) Then the little boy and his frog come back to their room.(IC 120) (16c) And then Tony and his parents and his other sister came home in their car.(IC 127)

( 17 )
Then the frog went away and jumped into a tray.(IC 119) (18) The frog jumped out of the tray hurriedly and unfortunately it went into a husband's cup.(IC 116) With respect to the use of deictic Motion verb come, in eight cases it describes the frog's Motion in the restaurant.
Figure moves from one place to another and the initial location and the final location are in two different spaces, the Figure needs to cross a boundary to get from the initial to the final location.If the Figure in motion is considered to cross a boundary, a Path verb is required to express the Figure's movement rather than a Manner verb.Since there is no boundary-crossing constraint in Chinese, Chinese speakers can express boundary crossings freely with Manner verbs.As is expected, French EFL learners use deictic Motion verbs to avoid the use of Manner verbs because Manner verbs cannot be used in French in this context.This is this fact that leads to their overuse of deictic Motion verbs in Frog goes to dinner.