Bidirectional Conceptualization Transfer In Motion Events Processing Of Chinese EFL Learners:An Eye-Tracking Study

As a new trend of transfer study,conceptual transfer has received increasing attention.However,issues regarding the definition and measurement of conceptual transfer remain unsettled,which makes many researchers confuse two types of conceptual transfer,namely conceptualization transfer and concept transfer.This study revised the way to distinguish between conceptualization transfer and concept transfer,and conducted 4 experiments on the basis of cognitive contrastive analysis theory,to investigate how Chinese EFL learners with low and high English proficiency describe and conceptualize the path,manner/reason and ground elements of motion events compared with English natives and Chinese natives.The study aims to answer two research questions:(1)Whether bidirectional conceptualization transfer occurs when EFL learners process motion events?(2)How does bidirectional conceptualization transfer occur?For the first question,to judge whether conceptualization transfer occurs,data from both the linguistic level and the conceptual level were collected and compared with each other,to see whether EFL learners' ways of describing motion events are consistent with their ways of conceptualizing motion events.Experiment 1 collected linguistic data by a picture story retelling task.Experiment 2 employed a video clip similarity judgment task with the help of eye-tracking technology to collect nonlinguistic data.Results show that EFL learners' ways of describing and conceptualizing motion events in L1 and L2 differ from those of Chinese natives and English natives significantly,and EFL learners' wayss of description are in line with the ways of conceptualization,which indicates that bidirectional conceptualization transfer occurs during motion events processing.Besides,with the increase of EFL learners' English proficiency,forward conceptualization transfer decreases while backward conceptualization transfer increases.The second question is to further explore EFL learners'conceptualization of motion events,to gain insight into the pattern of conceptualization transfer.Experiment 3 combined the sentence priming with the similarity judgment task conducted by the eye tracker to investigate how participants conceptualize motion events when their languages are activated.Results show that EFL learners' ways of conceptualizing motion events when languages are activated differ from those in the non-linguistic contexts of the Experiment 2,and the patterns of conceptualization change with the contexts.Experiment 4 asked EFL learners to watch and describe video clips,and their patterns of conceptualization when thinking for speaking in L1 and L2 as well as their ways of description were recorded by the eye tracker.It is found that the conceptualization patterns in the forward conceptualization transfer are not the same with the conceptualization pattern in the backward conceptualization transfer.EFL learners' conceptualization patterns are more approximate to the mother language when using L1 and more approximate to the target language when using L2.Accordingly,EFL learners' ways of describing motion events in L1 and L2 are also different.This study has clarified the scope of conceptualization transfer,proposed a methodological framework and a model of bidirectional conceptualization transfer from the perspective of the cognitive contrastive analysis which highlight the characteristics of conceptualization transfer,and discussed the changing trends of L2 learners' language and cognition during L2 development,inferring that L2 learners'L1 and L2 show a parallel developing trend.