Multilingualism

Askar Mambetaliev, June 18, 2020

Individual Multilingualism Multilingual Through Instruction Societal Multilingualism

multil.org/journal/ComplexExam.pptx
Individual Multilingualism

 Literature Review
 Bilingual Advantages
 Bilingualism and Brain
 Bilingual Development Processes in Children
and Adults
 Theories and Dimensions of Bilingualism
 DMM, TL Advantages, Later Publications.
Earlier Publications
 Ronjat (1913): advocated the OPOL rule originally proposed by Grammont. 
 Leopold (1939-49): ~2-3 y.o. children become aware of two systems (based on his diary).
 Corder (1967): The Significance of Learners' Errors.
 Selinker (1972): Interlanguage. 
 Volterra and Taeschner (1978): "young children speak a mixed sort of language (not upheld
currently). 
 McLaughlin (1978): cut-off point at the age of three, when the first language becomes
established in the child. He also described simultaneous and successive bilingualism
 Givon (1979): makes distinction between syntactic (or grammatical) and pragmatic and
believes that pragmatic occurs first. Bates and MacWinney (1982) claimed that even adults
follow this principle (i.e. proposed by Givon, 1979) without paying attention to grammar
(see parallel to Chomsky).
 Later Publications
Saunders (1982): A longitudinal study of OPOL rule. 
Porsche (1983): his son’s early lexical dev-t.
Meisel (1989): “code-switching” and “code-mixing”,  "syntactic-pragmatic
principle of language processing". 
De Houwer (1990): Bilingualism of ELL. "Each language is handled as a system
in its own right”(this view is in contrast to Genesee, 2009). “Three y.o. bilinguals
resemble their monolingual peers in either language".
Bialystok and Hakuta (1994), Singleton & Lengyel (1995) on Critical Period
Hypothesis originally proposed by Penfield and Roberts (1959) and Lenneberg
(1967) on L1 acquisition.
Susanne Barron-Hauwaert (2004), Language Strategies for Bilingual Families:
The OPOL Approach.  
 Bilingualism Advantages and Criticisms
(My summary published by DOSZ, 2019)

Bilingualism Advantages Counterarguments:

• Overwhelming studies point to pos. correl. of • Studies mostly in the West (excl. is Hydarabad) and
BL with EF (Byalstok, Bak, Kavé). compared groups differ in many var. (Bak, 2016)

• BL positively correlates with learning
additional languages (Kaushanskaya &
Marian, 2009).
• BL postpones mental diseases up to 5 years
(Byalstok, Kroll).
• Multilingualism provides more opportunities
in job markets.
• Smaller vocabulary size and slower lexical retrieval
(Jessner, 1999; Baumgart & Billick, 2018).
• Other authors:
Paap and Greenberg (2013);
Bastian, Souza & Gade (2015),
Gudmundsdottir & Lesk (2019).
 Bilingualism and Brain
• Main brain areas responsible for language
comprehension and production. (Broca,
Wernicke, Temporary)

• BL causes greater blood supply, thus improving

neuronal connections  increased density of
white and grey matters, especially among ELL
(Roza et al, 2013; Abutalebi et al, 2015;
Baumgart & Billick, 2018).

• Better structural connectivity on pathways

associated with semantic processing among
early bilinguals
Photo: from the thesis by Gierhan (2013).
Bilingual Development Processes
in Children
Age~2: Awareness of two languages, but mix languages while trying to
communicate (Hauwaert, 2004). 
Age~3: Cut-off point of L1 (McLaughlin, 1978), bilinguals resemble their
monolingual peers in either language (De Hower, 1990), a threshold for native-
bilingual or late-bilingual.
Age~4: Mixing fades out to monolinguals (Houwer, 1982).  Uses languages as
separate systems.
Age~6: Clearly understands the role of (in)formal language (Hauwaert, 2004).
Age~8: Switches Ln according to speaker, topic, setting and social norms (Hauwaert,
2004).
Typical time needed to achieve expressive level for two languages is 3-5 years and for
three languages is 5-6 years (Hauwaert, 2004).
Typical time needed for SLA in Adults
(Krashen, 2018)
 Pre-production or silent: receptive vocabulary ~500 words, lasts 3-6
mo
 Early production: active and recep. ~1000 words, can use short
phrases of 2-3 words, lasts up to 6 months
 Speech emergence: can communicate using simple questions and
phrases, using ~3000 words
 Intermediate fluency: can share their opinions using complicated
grammar structures, ~6000 words
 Advanced fluency: ~ native-like level, requires 5-10 years of learning
 Theories of SLA
(Continued in the next slide)

 Innatism (Chomsky)
 Usage-based theory (Ellis & Wulff, 2015)
 Age effects and Critical Period Hypothesis: Puberty & L1,
plasticity of procedural memory (some argue that it declines by the
age 5).
 Declarative-Procedural Model (Ulman, 2011)
 Skill Acquisition Theory (DeKeyser, 2011).
 Input Processing Theory (How L2 learners comprehend, process
and produce) (VanPatten, 1996).
Theories of SLA
 Sociocultural Theory
 Complexity Theory: learning SLA dynamic and non-
linear (no isomorphic relation btw cause and effect, not
unidirectional)
 Complex Dynamic System Theory emphasizes
on initial conditions, non-linearity, dynamism,
attractors, emergence and coadaptation.
 SLA Theory by James Cummins (each consequent
languages are easier to learn; cognitive learning is
more effective than behavioral (interaction)
Types of Multilingualism

 Early: Simultaneous and Successive

 Late or Consecutive (after age 6-7)
 Additive
 Subtractive
 Passive bilingualism
SLA Dimensions
 Linguistic: typological (structure and function) and
generative approaches
 Cognitive or non-linguistic: for example, Ln and EF, Ln and
Health
 Socio-cultural: importance of interactions, overcoming
cultural barriers in multicultural communities (Baumgart &
Billick, 2018; Mambetaliev, 2019).
 Instructional: related to OPOL, MoI, Pedagogy, etc
 LPP (my addition)
Ways of Becoming Bilingual
 Minorities (L1 in family, L2 in society)
 Immigration (strong motiv in SLA)
 Migration (weak motiv in SLA)
 Schooling (formal learning, exposure to language,
teacher’s personality, etc.)
 Family (mixed marriages, language teachers)
 Multilingual language policy (my topic)
 DMM as an Ecological System
(Herdina & Jessner, 2000).

 General Language Effort = Acquisition Effort + Maintenance Effort, i.e.

language attrition is a function of language acquisition.
 TLA as dynamic concept. TL develops different language learning and
language management skills than BL, since Trilinguals develop
enhanced psycholinguistic abilities and metalinguistic awareness, but
may feel a deficiency in their certain Ln compared to monolinguals
(Jessner, 1999) and bilinguals (Hauwaert, 2004).
 TL CS is rarer than their BL CS in the same sentence” (Hauwaert, 2004).
 Development of multilingual system depends on the language
environment. 
Characteristics of Trilingualism
 Language attrition is frequent in TLA, which is due to
active competition of languages in the speaker’s
psycholinguistic system. Attrition depends on duration of
Ln, Age of Acquisition.
 Due to constant acquisition and attrition processes in TL >
The more Ln, the more efforts to maintain Ln are
needed.
 The dev-t of each language within TL depends on the
behavior of previous and subsequent systems.
Trilingualism (Latest Publications)
 All Ln compete for selection in the brain of TL brain;
 CS/CM btw Chinese and English is found beneficial in schools
(Lixun, 2019)
 Attitudes towards TL found positive in China (Wei, Jiang, &
Kong, 2019).
 TL students who were exposed to En in the same extent as the
BL students showed better results in the En subject in Sweden
(Robin, 2019).
 Multilingualism through Instruction

• Multilingual Approaches to Education

• Codeswitching as a positive technique
• Multilingual Education Models
• Teachers as LP Agents
• Additive vs Subtractive LPE
• The OPOL Approach
• Ecology of Language Learning
Multilingual Approaches to Education
 Translanguaging (using the student Ln as a resource)
 Intercomprehension (btw close Ln)
 Functional Multilingual Learning: when teachers use language
repertoirs of students as scaffolding for learning the target language.
 An ecological approach supports the concept of plurilingualism by
providing a context for learners to build a repertoire of individualized
communication skills in several languages (including dialects) to
meet their own needs at home and in society”(Saville, 2019).
 CS in classroom as a positive technique: Subtracting L1 of students
has negative effects on the students.
 Teacher have to develop a healthy attitude towards Diglossia.
Multilingual Education Modes
 TriLA Modes:
L1+L2+L3, L1/L2+L3, L1+L2/L3, L1/L2/L3

 FourLA Modes:
L1..L2..L3..L4, L1..L2/L3..L4, L1…L2/L3/L4,
L1/L2..L3/L4, L1/L2/L3..L4, L1/L2/L3/L4
Multilingual Education Models

 Teaching ‘in’ vs ’of’ a minority language as the MoI (Baker, 2001).

 Gorter and Cenos (2012, p.187) define following models:
A) No minority teaching at all;
B) Minority language as a subject, the dominant language as a
medium of instruction;
C) Both the minority language and the dominant language as a MoI
D) The minority language as a MoI, dominant language as a subject
 Societal Multilingualism
Askar Mambetaliev, June 18, 2020

Roughly 7000 languages, 200 nation-states,

More than 50% of the world speak 10 Ln.

Increasing bilingualism with English, French, Spanish,

and Chinese and extinction of smaller Ln (Romanie, 2006,
pp. 388, 396).

“Some linguists predict that between 50 and 90 percent

of the world’s 7000 languages will disappear over the
next century” (Nettle & Romaine 2000).
 Regional Minorities, Education and
Language Revitalization
1.1. Regional Minorities (unique, have a kin state, in-state admin borders;).
1.2. Needs: Language Maintenance and Language
Transmission
1.3. The Models of Education
(Weak and Strong models: min lan as MoI, man lan as subject, both mon
and dom lan as Moi, min as MoI, dom as subject; The role of teacher).
1.4. Revitalization of Regional Languages. (RLS, Euromosaic)
Societal Bilingualism and its Effects
(Romanie, 2006)

2.2. Individuals, Groups, Borders, Territories

2.3. Typology of Minorities

(autochtonous, (im)migrant, adjoining, caste-like/autonomous)
2.4. An Example of Language Shift (Village near
Hun/Aus)
 Societal Bilingualism and its Effects

2.5. De-Jure vs. de facto bilingualism.

2.6. Permissive, Active and Preventive Defences

of Multilingualism. (Fishman described lan
problem with illness offered 8 stages for RLS)

2.9. Creolization and Indigenization (Mufwene)

Minority and Endangered Languages

 Profound Multilingualism
 Receding Multilingualism (Language Shift as
the Norm, Maintenance as the Exception)

 Reactive Language Maintenance

 Assertive Language Maintenance
Bilingualism and Gender
 Not only did women in some contexts turn out to be more bilingual
than the men in their community, but it was also shown that it often
was the women who initiated language shift in their community.
 Exogamy and language shift.
 The gendered desires of the learners are matched by those of their
host society, which also portrays Asian women as desirable
partners for Western men, but does not view Asian men as
desirable partners for Western women (Piller and Pavlenko,
p.497).
 Bilingualism in the Global Media
(Bhatia & Ritchie).
 English in advertisements (Why mix English in advertisements? How
society looks at the mixing?).

 Inner circle (UK, US), Outer circle (India, Nigeria),

Expanding circle (China, Russia).
 Competitive vs Cooperative mixing of English/Local
languages.
Changing Language Loyalties in Central Asia
(Bridgit Schlyter)
 1920/30: Korenizatsia Policy. “During this period, non-native, mostly Russian
employees in the Central Asian republics were urged to learn the majority
native language.
 “Up to the mid-1970s, Soviet rhetoric on language issues included the two
terms sblizhenie, ‘rapprochement’, and sliianie, ‘merging’, which had also been
used for other aspects of the relationship between nationalities.
 The aim of Soviet language policy was language shift (p.824). This policy was
rather covert, not declared though.
 1991: “the former Soviet prestige language, Russian, is challenged by new
language policies” (p.809).
 Trilingualism with English improves the status of new state languages in
the FSU (Mambetaliev, 2018; Ibragimov & Ashrapova, 2019).
 Contact and Society
(Content)

3.1. Scenarios for Language Contact (Muysken)

3.2. Ethnic Identity and Linguistic Contact (Fought)
3.3. Contact and Sociolinguistic Typology (Trudgill)
3.4. Contact and Language Death (Romaine)
3.5. Fieldwork in Contact Situations (Claire Bowern)
 
Scenarios for Language Contact

 Borrowing, Relexification,
 Grammatical convergence under prolonged
stable bilingualism,
 Metatypy
 Adjunctional and Alternational code-switching,
 Language attrition and death,
 Contact and Language Death

 Sudden or Gradual: Speakers and domains of use are critical for language
survival (p.320).
 Causes of Language Death or Language Shift: intense pressure from a
dominant group leads to asymmetrical bilingualism among subordinate groups,
resulting sooner or later in language shift.
 Signs to Language Shift: Loss of native vocabulary, extensive borrowing from
dominant language, reduction of allomorphs, loss of phonological distinctions,
incomplete acquisition, declining use, deviation or change of lexicon, phonology,
syntax, etc, stylistic reduction and functional restriction.
Longitudinal study of language attrition in
Dutch immigrants in Australia
 Dutch in Australia undergone shift to the dominant language.
 Transfer from English to Dutch included, lexical transference, phonological
integration, compromise forms between English and Dutch, semantic
transfers, syntactic transference, CS of discourse markers (e.g. well, like,
you know, sort of), CS in anticipation of consequence of a trigger word.
 “there may be attrition in the first decade, but our data show that the
language skills which are still present after this period are fairly stable.
Maintenance efforts should therefore be concentrated in the first decade after
migration because, later on, the residual knowledge is likely to remain at the
same level”.
Fieldwork in Contact Situations
 The medium you work through as a field language will
harm your ability to get data in your target language.
 Field techniques: ethnographic methods (what you can
infer from languages themselves, interviews and self-
reports, observations).
 Working in different communities: symmetric and
asymmetric multilingualism, Endangered (indigenous)
language communities, Community/heritage languages.
Linguistic Landscape

 Authorities often employ LL as a mechanism to promote favorable LP.

 Landry and Bourhis (1997) presented LL as “the language of public road signs,
advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and
public signs on governmental buildings”
 Shohamy and Gorter (2009): offered a study of LL from language policies (LP)
and identity perspectives.
 Gorter & Cenoz (2017): languages of signs influence second language learners’
perception of the status of languages and affect their linguistic behavior.
 LL: Methodological approaches

 Qualitative approach (collecting photos and

interpreting their meanings)
 Quantitative-distributive approach (top-down, bottom-
up, code-mixing in public signs)
 Diachronic approach
  Erasure, Replacement, Upgrading/Downgrading (fSU)
Current Multilingualism:
A New Linguistic Dispensation
The unparalleled spread of the use of English as
an international language VS. a remarkable
diversification of languages in use.
Current multilingualism VS historical
multilingualism.

Ubiquitous (everywhere)
 References
 Cenoz, J. and D. Gorter (2012). Regional minorities, education and language revitalization. Eds. Martin-Jones, M., Blackledge, A.
and A. Creese. The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism. London: Routledge. 184-198.
 Herdina, Philip und Ulrike Jessner. Multilingualism as an ecological system. The case for language maintenance. ECOnstructing
Language, Nature and Society. The Ecolinguistic Project Revisited (131-144). Ed. Bernhard Kettemann und Hermine Penz.
Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2000.
 Bhatia, Tej K. and William C. Ritchie (eds.) 2006. The handbook of bilingualism. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Part
III: Societal Bilingualism and its Effects (pp. 379–612).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18YltsQEO2pvdpDViRZ5jBnmEJOOtMTE7/view?usp=sharing
 Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2010. The Handbook of Language Contact. Hong Kong: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Part III: Contact and
Society (pp. 263–357). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WFKArZ_DFWA-j8XbbuSGn0IhoyR-qx6S/view?usp=sharing
 Durk Gorter (ed.) (2006). Linguistic Landscape. A New Approach to Multilingualism. Multilingual Matters. 89 p.
 Aneta Pavlenko (2009). Language conflict in post-Soviet linguistic landscape. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 17(1–2): 247–274.
 Singleton, D., Fishman, J., Aronin, L and Laoire, M. (eds) (2013) Current Multilingualism. A new linguistic dispensation. De
Gruyter. Mouton. 376.
 de Bot, K., & Clyne, M. (1994). A 16-year longitudinal study of language attrition in Dutch immigrants in Australia. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 15(1), 17-28. 
Kösönöm!
Thank you!