The paper analyzes the data collected during interviews recorded with Polish-French and Polish-English-speaking bilingual children living in Poland, aged from 4 to 8. The task given to the participants was to describe spatial situations in a series of images by answering the researcher’s question where is X? The answers were supposed to follow the BLC (Basic Locative Construction) pattern. The given locative constructions were then transcribed in CHAT format and analyzed in order to find out what the children’s repertoire of locative prepositions in both language groups is, if the prepositions follow the order of acquisition for both French and English and if any discrepancies in the use of prepositions might result from interlingual transfer.
Our article focuses on the subject of locative verbs, as one of the elements of the description of space which are the most likely to vary across languages. The Basic Locative Construction, typical construction selected by speakers to answer the question “where is X?”, can contain either a general locative verb, or a specific verb encoding Posture or Manner. The purpose of our article is to examine the use of locative verbs in the descriptions of localisation done by bilingual Polish-French-speaking children (9 children aged 4;0 to 8;2). Their task was to describe the spatial relationship between objects in presented images by answering the question “where is...?”. The task was performed in French and in Polish and the children’s descriptions were recorded and then transcribed in the CHAT format. We analysed the construction of the BLC in the children’s responses to identify its constituent elements in both languages and then determine which locative verbs appear. We compared the results in the two languages to see if any influence between them is evident.
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