Projects / Programmes
Acquisition of a minority language in a multilingual context
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.05.00 |
Humanities |
Linguistics |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 6.02 |
Humanities |
Languages and Literature |
minority language, multilingualism, sentence comprehension, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics
Data for the last 5 years (citations for the last 10 years) on
April 19, 2024;
A3 for period
2018-2022
Data for ARIS tenders (
04.04.2019 – Programme tender,
archive
)
| Database |
Linked records |
Citations |
Pure citations |
Average pure citations |
| WoS |
45 |
740 |
707 |
15.71 |
| Scopus |
42 |
909 |
883 |
21.02 |
Researchers (6)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
Multilingualism is a reality and a characteristic feature of today's Europe. The expansion of the European Union along with accompanying integrational processes have led to a dramatic increase in the number of multilingual communities consisting of different generations of migrants and/or speakers of more than one language. These different generations of multilingual speakers may speak a language at home (their home-country, native or heritage language) which we refer to as a minority language, that is different from the societal or majority language. The languages of multilingual individuals are in constant interaction with each other, influencing each other not only i) within the same individual and between (groups of) individuals but also ii) as they are passed on from generation to generation among learners. This intergenerational transmission takes place through traditional means of face-to-face communication and through the use of digital media both at home, at school and in the wider community. While there is a large body of multilingualism research concerning acquisition of the first, or majority, language, there is much less understanding of the process of acquisition and use of a minority language, in the context of an explicit dominance of the majority language in a given bilingual environment. A related, though distinct, problem has to do with the fact that we currently do not have developed tools for evaluating proficiency levels in a minority language. The aim of the project is to make important first steps in understanding the process of acquisition and knowledge of a minority language, concentrating, in particular, on the process of intergenerational transmission in a bilingual context. The main research questions are: 1) How is minority language development shaped during intergenerational language transmission? 2) What are relevant sociolinguistic variables that contribute to minority language acquisition, maintenance and loss? 3) How can we best measure and document the levels of syntactic proficiency of a minority language? Because the challenge is vast, this project will be delimited both by the type of the population tested as well as the level of linguistic description. In particular, the project will focus on Slovenian as a minority language of the bilingual population in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy. The linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of the project will focus primarily on one level of linguistic description, namely, syntax. The sociolinguistic component will compare the use of minority Slovenian in different social contexts at the level of sentence comprehension, aiming to understand the extent to which these respective environments affect and/or modulate the process of acquisition and maintenance of this language in the bilingual community. Thus the project will include a) documenting the typical use of Slovenian as a minority language in a prevailing Italian-speaking environment; b) analyzing linguistic performance in minority Slovenian at the level of sentence comprehension, using established tools and protocols of contemporary behavioral psycholinguistics; and c) developing a specialized proficiency test for testing proficiency in Slovenian as a minority language. The answers to research questions 1-3 are expected to substantially increase our understanding of the dynamics of intergenerational language transmission of a minority language, and will contribute to the larger societal need to properly appreciate the benefit from the contribution of a minority language in the modern European multilingual context.
