Learning to cross boundaries: Motion conceptualization in Turkish learners of English

Languages differ typologically in how they encode motion, especially in boundary-crossing contexts, such as moving from outside to inside a building. English, a satellite-framed language, typically uses a manner verb and a path satellite (e.g., run into the house ), and tends to mark a boundary-crossing event explicitly. Turkish, a verb-framed language, tends to use a path verb and to express manner peripherally, and tends to mark a boundary crossing implicitly or not at all. Using a Picture Description Task, this study investigated how L1 Turkish speakers at different English proficiency levels express boundary-crossing events. We aimed to answer three questions: (1) How do Turkish learners of English express boundary crossing compared to English and Turkish monolinguals? (2) To what extent do L1 patterns persist in L2 production? (3) Does higher L2 proficiency promote more English-like framing? Our results suggest that while Turkish learners’ verb choices increasingly aligned with English speakers, the expression of boundary crossing events remained strongly influenced by their L1, even at advanced levels. The results support the Thinking-for-Speaking hypothesis, suggesting that language-specific patterns continue to shape motion conceptualization in L2 output, even at higher proficiency levels.