This study investigated conceptual transfer and lexical development for spatial adjectives using participant judgments, reaction times, and eye-tracking measures. The study focused on the Japanese adjective semai and its partially equivalent English translation narrow. The study presented participants with images depicting two rooms with slight differences in height and width and asked them to identify which room was narrower. The only variation was the language in which the instructions were given: native language (L1) instructions for two L1 control groups, second language (L2) instructions for the experimental group (L1 Japanese speakers of L2 English). The results showed fundamental differences in processing between the control groups in respect to the judgments and reaction times, but not for the eye-tracking measures. Furthermore, the experimental group’s behavior indicated a conceptual understanding of narrow that was in line with developments in proficiency, but also limited to the judgment and reaction time measures. Based on these findings, we conclude that (a) conceptual transfer affects processing on receptive language tasks, and (b) L2 conceptual representations come to resemble those of native speakers as learners develop their lexical knowledge. However, we also suggest that (c) although conceptualizations likely affect cognitive functions, our eye-tracking data were too crude to capture this.

The intense reception of Carl Schmitt’s writings among Chinese constitutional theorists is one of the more striking phenomena within the globalisation of constitutional thought in recent decades. This article approaches it from two angles. First, the reception of Schmitt and the subsequent debates about his oeuvre and persona are interpreted as performative practices in which Schmitt soon emerged as both the bête noire of a liberal-leaning constitutional scholarship and an object of romantic projection for avant-garde theoretical endeavours. Engagement with Schmitt thus crucially contributed to the emergence of both a neo-conservative and a critical-liberal sensibility among Chinese legal scholars. Second, with the rise of what is known in China as Political Constitutionalism in the mid-2000s, Schmitt also began to exert a more substantive terminological and conceptual influence on Chinese constitutional theory more generally, leaving his imprint on some of its fundamental theoretical binaries. Looking at the Chinese debate on Schmitt, therefore, not only grants us a unique glimpse into how constitutional debates are structured and evolving in contemporary China, it also demonstrates the often-unexpected trajectories of conceptual migration in the global age.

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.