Events are described in slightly different ways in different languages. Consider an event in which a person moves from one place to another. Figure, ground, path, and manner all constitute important semantic components of such a motion event (Talmy, 1985, 2000). But how these components are elaborated in verbal descriptions seems to vary across languages. That is, manner-"motor pattern, rate, rhythm, posture, affect, and evaluative factors" (Slobin, 2003)tends to be mentioned more frequently and elaborated further in some languages than in others (Berman Slobin, 1994; Slobin, 1997, 2000, 2003). This variation in manner expressions seems to be directly related to a structural variation across languages that is summarized in Tlamy's typology (Talmy, 1985, 2000) of S-languages (e.g., English, German, Mandarin Chinese, Russian) vs. V-languages (Spanish, Turkish, Japanese).(1) S-language speakers tend to use verbs that conflate manner of motion (e.g., walk, stroll, meander) more frequently and in wider variety than V-language speakers (Berman Slobin 1994; Naigles et al., 1998; Ozcaliskan Slobin, 1999; Slobin, 1997, 2000). Moreover, manner is more frequently mentioned in S-languages even when linguistic means other than verbs are considered (Oh, in preparation, Ozcaliskan & Slobin, in press, but also see Naigles et al., 1998). Also, manner seems to be more frequently elaborated in S-languages than in V-languages (Oh, in preparation). This pattern suggests that speakers of S-languages and V-languages may conceptualize motion events in slightly different ways when they verbally describe them. In Slobin's words, they think differently when they are "thinking for speaking" (Slobin, 1997). Particularly, "...speakers of the two language types differ in their habitual attention to manner of motion..." (Slobin, 2000, p. 113). The primary question addressed in this paper is how the language-specific ways of thinking for speaking develop in children. Previous research indicated that language-specific characteristics of motion-event descriptions emerge at an early age, as evidenced by S-language speakers' production of more manner verbs than V-language speakers at the early age of 3 (Berman Slobin, 1994; Ozcaliskan Slobin, 1999; Slobin, 2000). However, it seems to be necessary to examine more general characteristics of subject's descriptions of motion events, as well as their motion-verb use, in addressing the development of language-specific ways of thinking for speaking. In the present study, motion-event descriptions in Korean (a V-language) and English (a S-language) by adults and 3-year-olds were analyzed in three different ways. First, as in previous studies, the frequencies of manner and path verbs produced by subjects were compared across the two languages. This was to confirm previous findings in the particular set of languages included in this study. Second, subjects' descriptions were coded in terms of their inclusion of manner and/or path components of motion events. This analysis, modified from another study (Allen, Ozyurek, Kita, Brown, & Turanli, 2002), provided a useful indicator of relative attention paid to manner and path for verbal descriptions, especially in the case of children. Third, in order to appraise the degree to which subjects tend to elaborate manner, the frequency of descriptions with attempts to elaborate manner was noted. In this analysis, which was adopted from another study by the author (Oh, in preparation), any description in which manner is elaborated further than a particular level (walking or running, as opposed to strolling or striding, for example) was counted for each subject. This level of manner specification was employed because this seemed to be the level at which manner of motion is specified most frequently with single words. An examination of the data collected for another study confirmed this assumption: approximately 68% of motion-event descriptions produced by English-speaking adults and 51% by Korean adults contained the verbs, walk or run. In comparison, 21% English descriptions and 11% of Korean descriptions contained manner verbs other than walk or run (Oh, in preparation). The results of this study offer indications regarding how the language-specific patterns and universal tendencies of young children interact with each other to influence the development of thinking for speaking.
