A cat in a window: expressing spatial relations in Polish (L1) and French (L2 and L1)

Sebastian Piotrowski, Rémy Porquier Porquier,

Abstract


The paper presents a study on the expression of spatial reference in Polish and French from the perspective of acquisition of French by Polish language speakers. Our study deals with the problem of spatial reference: projective reference on sagittal axis (devant/derrière, przed/za), which refers not only to the acquisition of specific lexical items but, what is equally important from the cognitive point of view, to the appropriation of semantic distinctions related to the perception and representation of space.

The empirical approach adopted in the study, in a semi-experimental manner, consisted in collecting utterances, in Polish (L1) and French (L2 and L1), of 20 young adults, concerning a series of pictures presenting various static spatial configurations. The corpus was then complemented, for comparison purposes, by French and Polish native speakers’ output in reaction to the same pictures.

The aim of the analysis is to propel and add new elements to the existing descriptions of the Polish language, to approach from a different perspective the descriptions previously provided for French, and make a contribution to Polish-French comparative studies.


Keywords


spatial reference; projective reference; acquisition; Polish-French comparative studies

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/ff.2018.36.1.125-138
Date of publication: 2018-11-05 11:24:43
Date of submission: 2018-02-21 19:44:22


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