{"pk":26085,"title":"Are we ON the same page?\nMonolingual and bilingual acquisition of familiar and novel relational language","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Verbs and prepositions pose significant challenges in second\nlanguage learning, as languages differ in how they map these\nrelational terms onto events. Second language learners must\nput aside their language-specific lens to uncover how a new\nlanguage operates, perhaps having to rediscover semantic\ndistinctions typically ignored in the first language. The\ncurrent study examines how the acquisition of these novel\nmappings are affected by characteristics of the learner and of\nthe language to be learned. English monolinguals and Dutch-\nEnglish bilinguals learned novel terms that corresponded to\ncontainment and support relations of either English, Dutch, or\nJapanese. Results show that English distinctions are learned\nbest across groups, potentially reflecting predispositions in\nhuman cognition. No differences were found between\nmonolinguals and bilinguals in any language condition. The\ncharacteristics of the language to be learned appear to play a\nprominent role in the acquisition of novel semantic categories.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Cognitive Semantics; Second Language\nLearning; Bilingualism; Event Perception"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5hn767j9","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Nathan","middle_name":"","last_name":"George","name_suffix":"","institution":"Penn State University","department":""},{"first_name":"Junko","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kanero","name_suffix":"","institution":"Temple University","department":""},{"first_name":"Dorothee","middle_name":"","last_name":"Chwilla","name_suffix":"","institution":"Radboud University","department":""},{"first_name":"Daniel","middle_name":"J.","last_name":"Weiss","name_suffix":"","institution":"Penn State University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2016-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26085/galley/15721/download/"}]}