Introduction

The behavior of manner-of-motion-verbs have been studied by several linguists (^{Folli and Ramchand 2005}, ^{Mateu and Rigau 2002}, ^{Mateu 2002}, among others). Previous studies reported show that it is required “positive” and “robust” input in order to map those conflation patterns in L2 English due to their semantic behavior of the verbs (^{Inagaki, 2001}, ²⁰⁰²). Inagaki studies have been following the same line of inquiry as they follow the well-known typology distinction proposed by ^{Talmy (1985}, ¹⁹⁹¹, ²⁰⁰⁰) the “satellite framed” languages (Germanic type languages) and the “Verb Framed” languages (mainly Romance type languages). The main claim of ^{Inagaki (2002)} relies on a relationship that he called Subset-superset between spatial prepositions. In other words, the Japanese language lacks spatial prepositions so Japanese learners of English need to go from a subset (Japanese) to a superset (English). After tested the subset-superset situation Inagaki concluded that Japanese speakers were not able to identify that English spatial prepositions have a directional component of meaning and he suggested that restructuring requires not only positive input but also 'robust' evidence from the target language input. Following the same topic (^{Inagaki 2001}) conducted a bidirectional study testing Japanese learners of English and English learners of Japanese. Inagaki concluded that L1 speakers of Japanese could learn argument structure realization types not present in their L1. This is because there is available and positive input in the target language; but the English learners of Japanese failed to identify the argument structure realization pattern that is ungrammatical in Japanese. This suggests that the absence of evidence in the input persists when an argument structure realization pattern in the L2 constitutes a subset of its counterpart in the L1. His results also suggest that the L2 acquisition of argument structure will not be difficult when the L2 is a superset of the L1 due to the availability of positive evidence, but transfer will be persistent when the L2 is a subset of the L1 (^{Inagaki 2001: 165}). ^{Hawkins (2019)} reported another study of the acquisition of manner-of-motion verbs in L2 English. In this report, Hawkins reviews a study carried out by ^{Bautista-Maldonado (2011)} where Spanish speakers were tested using a Picture task with manner-of-motion events with sentences like the football rolled into the goal vs the football rolled in the goal, and the Spanish counterpart, the ball entered the goal rolling. In all constructions there were arrows showing the ball going from outside the goal and in the other the ball rolling inside the goal. The participants task, in this case three groups of L1 Spanish with different proficiency levels of English were tested, was to rate the naturalness of the sentences in a scale from +2 (very natural) to -2 (very unnatural). The results reported show that the low-proficiency speakers tend to use the Spanish pattern (the ball entered the goal rolling) to express motion, the lower-intermediate group and the advanced group tend to use the English pattern to express directionality, but still the advanced group showed some uses of the Spanish pattern. Another study is presented by ^{Souza (2012)} who investigated the manner of motion verbs by Brazilian students learning English as a foreign language. He tested Brazilian bilinguals and monolingual students. Souza tested how do the bilinguals and monolinguals learn the passivization and double-object transitives. Using a lexical decision task (eye-tracking experiment) he found that the lexical decision time task was more effective in their L1 than in their L2 of the bilingual. He concluded that there was L2 learnability problems when making the passivization of the manner of motion verbs.

Summing up, in this last study the input and the use of the English pattern does not pre-empt the Spanish version. The research presented here follows the same line of inquiry, in other words, the objective of this research is to see to what extent do Spanish speakers accept the directionality of the manner-of motion verbs, and to see if they are using constructions in their L1 in order to have an equivalent in the L2 ( Transfer) of the locative expressions of events and the directionality expression of events. Following this line of inquiry, and to provide an answer to the following research questions: Do Spanish speakers initially assume that the realization of directed manner of motion constructions in English is the same as in Spanish? And to what extent, the proficiency level of English is playing a role?. The next section reviews the theoretical framework used in this research, next the methodology followed in this research, then the results and finally the discussion and conclusion.

Methodology

Following a quantitative approach, the participants’ general information is described here: 62 subjects participated in this research. All the participants were students attending a BA in English Language at a Public university in the southeast of Mexico. All the participants were administered a Placement Test in order to know their English proficiency level. Based on their obtained results , subjects were classified into three groups: 27 students with an Elementary level (Group 1), 15 at an intermediate level (Group 2), and 20 at an advanced level (Group 3). All of them were native speakers of Spanish, and none of them have lived in an English speaking country. The following table describe the information of the three groups.

Instrument

Data was collected using a Picture Matching Task (PMT) (^{Stringer, 2012}). This instrument consisted of a series of pictures containing 11 test items. In each picture there were three sentences accompanied with a set of event denoting motion events. In each picture there was represented a motion verb and a path. Each sentence contained a different preposition but only one was correct depicting the picture shown. The narrative proposed by Stringer is as follows: a monkey sits in a tree-house about to eat his banana; a parrot swoops in, steals the banana, and flies off. The monkey chases the parrot, determined to retrieve his banana. Their chase takes the monkey through several different spatial environments. On each picture relevant to the analysis, the monkey follows a particular trajectory (e.g. 'down', 'under', 'over', etc.), varying with the obstacles he encounters, and he exhibits a particular manner of motion (e.g. he 'slides' down a tree-trunk, 'runs' under a bridge, 'jumps' over a rock etc.). The monkey follows the parrot into a cave, where they encounter a lion . After that, the lion chases them out of the cave, after which the parrot drops the banana and flies away. The monkey recovers it, then retraces his steps back home as fast as he can, going through all the motions a second time, before eating his banana in peace.

An example of one item is shown below in Figure 1:

Source: ^{Stringer (2012)} The monkey picture book

Figure 1 A sample of a test item (^{Stringer, 2012}) 

Procedure

Both the Placement test and the Picture Matching Task (PMT) were applied together. The Placement test took 30 minutes in total. The Placement Test contains 60 items in total. The presentation of the Placement test was a paper and pencil version. The Picture matching task was presented to participants using a projector in a whole class. Each slide was projected in a screen and the participants were given an answer sheet. The participants’ task was to select the correct sentence, from the set of three choices, according to the action depicted by each picture. The slides were timed previously so they ran smoothly automatically one by one. It took 8 minutes to do the PMT. Both instruments were applied in a single session. After the administration of the tasks, the answers were coded and stored in an Excel file ready for statistical analysis.

Results

At a glance, as it is showed in Table 4 , it can be observed that there is no a pattern of development as it was expected. It was assumed that participants with higher level of English, participants would attain the native speaker use in L2 English. However, it seems that the participants with low level of English, group 1, are getting the right syntax and semantics, conflation pattern of a manner-of-motion verb with a Preposition of the constructions presented in the instrument. These results do show that Spanish speakers are getting the right syntax and semantics of the conflation of verbs and goal PP from the elementary levels. In other words, they are getting new parameters in L2 English, those parameters that are expressed differently in their L1, and this acquisition/learning might be due to the input they receive in class since the initial state of the L2.

The results are higher than 50% in most of the items, except in climbs up, runs under and flies above with the group 1, and runs after, flies over, and runs under with the group number 2, and there is no evidence that the advanced group (group 3) is getting less than 50% of the correct items. It was expected an incremental percentage, in the combination of runs into, but it seems that all the three groups got almost the same % (74% for the group 1, 73% for the group 2 and 75% for the group 3) so between groups there is not a significant difference in the mapping of runs into. What is really striking is the item swim across where the low level group got a higher percentage compared to the intermediate and advanced participants, it was expected the opposite of the results shown here (swim across 96% for the group 1, 80% for the group 2 and 85% for the group 3).

Table 5 shows that even with a more proficient level of English, participants of the group 3 are still using a wrong construction to express directionality with goal prepositions. It was expected that the group number 3 would have a minimum percentage compared to the other two groups with less proficiency. It was assumed that group 1 would have got a higher percentage of those incorrect, but the results do show the contrary. They are detecting that the goal preposition is not the right to express directionality depicted by the pictures presented in the instrument. The tendency expected here was that all participants of the group 1 will get a very high percentage of those incorrect constructions. Therefore, due to the less input received so far, the group 1 will have a higher choice of those incorrect and with more input these incorrect choices will disappear. The results of the three groups together were almost similar except in two items *jumps onto with percentages of 56, 40 and 25 and *flies up with percentages of 56, 40 and 25. Decrease in percentage was expected for all items but it seems that even at lower levels, the participants are getting the conflation pattern presented in table 4 and they are not selecting the wrong construction as illustrated in Table 5.

Discussion

Recalling that the research questions posted at the beginning were that Spanish speakers will initially assume that the conflation pattern of a manner-of-motion verb with a goal preposition will be given a locative reading instead of a directional reading and with more level of English they will map the correct event in L2 English. The results of this research do show the contrary in a sense that even at low elementary proficiency level of English; they are getting the directionality reading of the constructions tested in this research. Therefore, it seems that the proficiency level of English is not a factor to get the syntax-semantics interface of the conflation proposed by Talmy. In general, Spanish speakers, not matter what proficiency level of English they have got, they recognize the directional reading of the sentences like John ran into the house, for example. This provide evidence of answering the research question number two. What is more, it seems that for Spanish speakers learning those semantic components is not a problem. Probably those results, as suggested by Inagaki, are the result of the “positive” and “robust” evidence the participants have in classroom environment. Alternatively, it is likely that presenting sequences of three pictures, as the instrument used was designed; it is more likely that the participants get the directionality instead of just showing a picture with arrows. To test if the instrument used is playing a role it is required more research with different instruments such as videoclips or another way to elicit intuitions from participants. In addition, the results do not show much evidence of the transfer process from constructions in the L1, Spanish, into the L2 English since in most of the items there were used ambiguous prepositions. So for future research There must be designed a similar instrument but with more items with into and onto where the directionality of the constructions will case difficulties for the Spanish speakers.

Conclusion

The main objective of this research to test the effect that the L1 has into the L2 when acquiring a syntax-semantic interface in L2 English. There were formulated two assumptions at the beginning of the research and after that an instrument was applied in order to test those research questions. It was assumed that at the very elementary proficiency level of English the Spanish speakers , specially group 1, will have a locative reading due to the grammar of their L1 , which was Spanish, to construction with the conflated pattern of motion in L2 English and with more proficiency, with group 2 and group 3, they will get the correct conflated pattern of the directionality meaning in English. However, the results do show that even at elementary levels of proficiency, the Spanish speakers are getting the right pattern in L2 English, contrary of what expected. It also seems that those results are suggesting that this parameter of variation between English and Spanish is not problematic for Spanish speakers, even though other authors such as ^{Inagaki (2001}, ²⁰⁰²) do suggest the contrary with Japanese speakers learning English. What is surprising here is probably the instrument administered to the participants, it seems that the instrument was easy to infer the motion due to the pictures presented and it is likely that if participants are taught with these kind of tasks they will get the conflation pattern in L2 English no matter what language they speak, even of the motion events are not present in their mother tongue.

The methodological implications for this research is that the motion pattern in L2 English is available both with a lot of input to L2 learners of English and it only requires the correct tasks to be practiced in classroom environments to trigger the acquisition or learning of that parameter of variation between Spanish and English. So, more practice in class will be advisable in order to get the conflation pattern of English since the elementary levels.