Linguistically directed attention to the temporal aspect of action events in monolingual English speakers and Chinese–English bilingual speakers with varying English proficiency

• JENN-YEU CHEN ^[1] ; JUI-JU SU ^[1] ; CHAO-YANG LEE ^[2] ; PADRAIG G. O'SEAGHDHA ^[3]
  1. [1] National Cheng Kung University

     National Cheng Kung University

     Taiwán

     
  2. [2] Ohio University

     Ohio University

     Township of Athens, Estados Unidos

     
  3. [3] Lehigh University

     Lehigh University

     City of Bethlehem, Estados Unidos

     

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• Localización: Bilingualism: Language and cognition, ISSN 1366-7289, Vol. 15, Nº 2, 2012, págs. 413-421
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Chinese and English speakers seem to hold different conceptions of time which may be related to the different codings of time in the two languages. Employing a sentence–picture matching task, we have investigated this linguistic relativity in Chinese–English bilinguals varying in English proficiency and found that those with high proficiency performed differently from those with low proficiency. Additional monolingual English data, reported here, showed further that high-proficiency bilinguals performed similarly to the English monolinguals, suggesting that Chinese speakers’ sensitivity to the time of an action event might be modifiable according to the extent of their experience with a tensed language.