http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 11 Jan 2011 IP address: 132.235.82.57 Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 14 (1), 2011, 1–8 C  Cambridge University Press 2010 doi:10.1017/S1366728910000155 1 Conceptual transfer: Crosslinguistic effects in categorization and construal ∗ SCOTT JARVIS Ohio University Keywords: transfer, cross-linguistic influence, conceptual transfer Research on the relationship between language and cognition in bilinguals has often focused on general effects that are common to bilinguals of all language backgrounds, such as the positive effects of bilingualism in various areas of cognitive development (e.g., Bialystok, 2005; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). However, there are also language-specific effects in the relationship between language and cognition in bilinguals that emerge in the form of cross-linguistic influence and, in many cases, these cross-linguistic effects do not appear to be confined to purely linguistic (e.g., phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic) phenomena. For example, bilinguals’ choice of words for referring to objects and actions, as well as their choice of syntactic and discursive structures for referring to events and situations, often reflect ways of conveying meaning and intentions that are specific to particular language backgrounds. The theme of this special issue is conceptual transfer, an exciting area of research in bilingualism and second language acquisition that deals with cross-linguistic differences and cross-linguistic influences in the mental construction and verbal expression of meaning. This is an area of research that has been garnering increased attention in recent years and whose goals and scope have been coming into increasingly clearer view (see Jarvis, 2007; Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008). It is not always easy to see the big picture in this area of research, however, given that the relevant published work has appeared * I am grateful to all of the contributors and reviewers of this special issue for their excellent work and commitment to the quality of this collection of articles. I also wish to thank each of the contributors for their valuable comments and suggestions for improving my Introduction to the special issue. I owe special thanks to Michael Daller and Jeanine Treffers-Daller, with whom I co-organized the 2007 International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB6) colloquium that gave rise to this project, and also particularly to Aneta Pavlenko, who helped me develop the proposal for this project, and who has provided valuable advice at each step of the way. I am also indebted to editors David Green and Ping Li for their help and encouragement from beginning to end. Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics, Ohio University, Gordy Hall 383, Athens, OH 45701, USA jarvis@ohio.edu primarily in isolated studies (e.g., Athanasopoulos, 2009; Brown & Gullberg, 2008; Pavlenko, 2003) rather than in contextualized collected volumes like the present special issue. There also exist some misconceptions about the objectives of this area of research, the assumptions it rests on and its relationship to linguistic relativity (e.g., Lucy, 1992; Whorf, 1956), thinking for speaking (Slobin, 1993, 1996) and other related research frameworks (e.g., Levelt, 1989; von Stutterheim & Nüse, 2003). With these considerations in mind, my purpose in putting together this special issue has been to compile a carefully chosen selection of new, well-designed, theory-grounded empirical investigations that collectively illustrate the range of goals, the breadth of scope and the emerging trends of this area of research, and which also, of course, add to the body of knowledge of this phenomenon by bringing new findings to light. I have also sought out contributors who are not only interested in cross-linguistic effects arising from potential cognitive (e.g., mental processes) and conceptual differences across speakers of different languages, but who are also cautious in interpreting their data. The studies in this issue are furthermore noteworthy with respect to the diversity of L1s (Dutch, Greek, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish) and L2s (English, German, Swedish) represented, as well as with respect to the attention given to cross-linguistic effects in both directions, from L1 to L2 and L2 to L1. Although not all of the studies in this special issue deal explicitly with the notion of conceptual transfer, this nevertheless represents the context of the present forum, and it is therefore necessary for me to explain what this means in more detail. The term CONCEPTUAL TRANSFER can be understood at three different levels: as an observation, approach and hypothesis. First, at an informal level, it refers to the observation that language learners, L2 users, bilinguals and multilinguals from different language backgrounds sometimes express objects, events, qualities and relationships in conceptually different ways. Anecdotal evidence for this abounds,