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French-Dutch bilinguals do not maintain obligatory semantic distinctions: Evidence from placement verbs

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Author

Summary, in English

It is often said that bilinguals are not the sum of two monolinguals but that bilingual systems represent a third pattern. This study explores the exact nature of this pattern. We ask whether there is evidence of a merged system when one language makes an obligatory distinction that the other one does not, namely in the case of placement verbs in French and Dutch, and whether such a merged system is realised as a more general or a more specific system. The results show that in elicited descriptions Belgian French-Dutch bilinguals drop one of the categories in one of the languages, resulting in a more general semantic system in comparison with the non-contact variety. They do not uphold the obligatory distinction in the verb nor elsewhere despite its communicative relevance. This raises important questions regarding how widespread these differences are and what drives these patterns.

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

22-37

Publication/Series

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition

Volume

17

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Topic

  • General Language Studies and Linguistics

Keywords

  • bilingualism
  • convergence
  • Dutch
  • French
  • placement
  • caused motion

Status

Published

Project

  • Thinking in Time: Cognition, Communication and Learning

Research group

  • Language Acquisition

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1366-7289