University of Plymouth PEARL https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk 04 University of Plymouth Research Theses 01 Research Theses Main Collection 2016 Literal and figurative meanings of Spanish spatial prepositions in Chinese students' acquisition of Spanish as a third language Encinas Arquero, Pablo http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/4873 Plymouth University All content in PEARL is protected by copyright law. Author manuscripts are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author. LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE MEANINGS OF SPANISH SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS IN CHINESE STUDENTS’ ACQUISITION OF SPANISH AS A THIRD LANGUAGE by Pablo Encinas Arquero A thesis submitted to Plymouth University in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Faculty of Social Sciences and Business August 2015 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright in this thesis is owned by the author. Any quotation from the thesis or use of any of the information contained in it must acknowledge this thesis as the source of the quotation or information. ii LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE MEANINGS OF SPANISH SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS IN CHINESE STUDENTS’ ACQUISITION OF SPANISH AS A THIRD LANGUAGE by Pablo Encinas Arquero A thesis submitted to Plymouth University in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Faculty of Social Sciences and Business August 2015 ABSTRACT Literal and figurative meanings of Spanish spatial prepositions in Chinese students’ acquisition of Spanish as a third language Pablo Encinas Arquero Doctor of Philosophy Candidate, 2015 Graduate Department of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, University of Plymouth Abstract This thesis investigates the acquisition of the spatial and figurative meanings of five Spanish spatial particles, namely sobre, encima, debajo, bajo and en, by a group of Chinese university students of Spanish as a foreign language at intermediate and upper-intermediate language levels. More specifically, this study aims to answer two questions. The first question considers the order of acquisition of prepositional meanings, that is, whether this is similar to a native language, with literal and more primary meanings acquired first and figurative ones later or, conversely, whether the pattern of acquisition is different to that found in a first language (Kemmerer, 2005; Lam, 2010). The second question of this research is to determine whether there are observable differences between the degree of acquisition and use of these prepositions in English compared to Spanish, and if so, what the characteristics of these differences are. To try to answer these questions, the performance of this group of participants in four behavioural tests is compared. The tests were a lexical identification task, a picture fill- in-the- blank task, a sentence generation task and a truth value judgment task. These tests were conducted both in Spanish, which the participants had begun to study at v undergraduate level and English, which they had first been exposed to in school in a pre- puberty period. The results of this study indicate, first, that the acquisition of the literal and figurative meanings of the spatial particles in this study does not follow a pattern similar to that found in a native language. That is, meaning acquisition in a foreign language occurs in a parallel or simultaneous pattern. Furthermore, in a non-immersion context such as that of this study, the age at which students begin the study of a foreign language is not a decisive factor in determining the degree of mastery that students can obtain. The quantity and quality of the input students are exposed to; together with an appropriate methodology appear to be the most important factors in predicting the level of proficiency that can be reached. vi LIST OF CONTENTS Copyright statement ................................................................................................................. ii Abstract .................................................................................................................................... v List of contents ....................................................................................................................... vii List of tables ............................................................................................................................ xii List of figures ......................................................................................................................... xvi AbbreviationS ....................................................................................................................... xvii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. xviii Author´s Declaration .............................................................................................................. xx Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Definitions and meaning of prepositions and spatial words .......................................... 6 1.2 The acquisition of prepositions in a second or foreign language................................... 9 1.3 Research Questions ...................................................................................................... 14 1.4 Outline of Study ............................................................................................................ 18 Chapter 2: Spatial prepositional systems ............................................................................... 21 2.1. Studying prepositions and their meanings .................................................................. 23 2.1.1 The meaning of prepositions ..............................................................................23 2.1.2 Prepositions and homonymy ..............................................................................25 2.1.3 Prepositions and monosemy ..............................................................................26 2.1.4 Prepositions and polysemy .................................................................................28 2.1.5 Tyler & Evans’ principled polysemy model.........................................................29 2.1.6 Spatial and figurative meanings .........................................................................34 2.1.7 Prepositions and cross-linguistic variation .........................................................40 2.2 The Spanish prepositional system ................................................................................ 44 2.2.1 The preposition en ..............................................................................................46 2.2.2 The prepositions sobre and bajo ........................................................................47 2.2.3 The prepositional phrases encima de and debajo de .........................................48 2.2.4 Relationship between the particles encima (de), sobre, debajo (de) and bajo..50 2.3 The spatial particles over, above, below, under and in ................................................ 52 2.3.1 The preposition over ...........................................................................................53 vii 2.3.2 The preposition above ....................................................................................... 54 2.3.3 The preposition under ....................................................................................... 55 2.3.4 The preposition below ....................................................................................... 56 2.3.5 The preposition in .............................................................................................. 58 2.4 Spatial expression in Chinese ....................................................................................... 60 2.4.1 The locative particles 在。。。 里 ( 边/ 面 ) .................................................... 63 2.4.2 The locative particles 在。。。 上 and 在。。。下 ..................................... 64 Summary: .......................................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 3: The Acquistion of prepositions in a second/Foreign Language ............................ 69 3.1 The process of acquisition of a prepositional system .................................................. 72 3.1.1 The relationship between acquisition of a L1 and the acquisition of a FL ........ 73 3.1.2 The acquisition of the Spanish prepositional system (L1) ................................. 74 3.2 The acquisition of the prepositional system in a foreign language (FL) ....................... 80 3.2.1 Age-related factors ............................................................................................ 84 3.2.2 The acquisition of prepositions in the field of SFL............................................. 90 3.2.3 Acquisition of the prepositional system by Chinese (L1) students ................... 94 3.3 Studies on SFL acquisition in China............................................................................... 98 3.3.1 SFL study in China .............................................................................................. 99 3.3.2 Characteristics of Chinese (L1) students of Spanish