International Summer School on Multilingualism 5th–9th July 2021

Organised by the Centre for Research and Enterprise in Language (CREL), University of Greenwich (UK) and the Centre for Linguistics, Language Education and Acquisition Research (CLLEAR), University of Southampton (UK) with the collaboration of the Center for Language Science (CLS) from Pennsylvania State University (USA).

This school is funded by the Centre for Research and Enterprise in Language of the University of Greenwich and the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities (SIAH).

This international summer school offers an immersive learning experience on multiple facets on multilingualism facilitated by scholars internationally recognised, and the opportunity to access international networks. The course is highly interactive and takes a holistic approach, covering topics that range from the theoretical underpinnings of language analysis, development and processing, to the quantitative analysis of the data. Classes and workshops will be delivered online over the course of one week. Registered participants will receive a link to course documentation including key readings, some to prepare prior to the lectures.

Date:  5^th–9^th July 2021

Teaching language: English

Location:  Online - a link will be emailed to you

Early bird fee (up to 1st June): £250
Regular fee: £300

Book tickets here

Refund policy for cancellation by delegates:
Up to 4 weeks before start of course:  no refund
Up to 8 weeks before start of course:  50% refund
Over 8 weeks before start of course: 75% refund

For queries email: multilingualism_school@greenwich.ac.uk

What Participants Will Learn

Topics include:

• Evidence in second language acquisition
• Native language attrition
• Heritage language acquisition
• Third language acquisition
• Syntactic analyses relevant to multilingualism research
• Quantitative methods

What Participants Will Get

• A five-day immersive learning experience comprising different aspects of multilingualism
• Workshops on the quantitative analysis of data
• Invitation to an open public lecture on the last day of the course
• A certificate of attendance, upon active engagement throughout the week

Participants will receive materials and links to courses

Who Should Attend?

The course is suitable for graduates who want to get a head start in postgraduate studies as well as masters or doctoral students interested in honing their knowledge and broadening their networks internationally. The course can also be attractive to language practitioners interested in getting an overview of current knowledge of language learning processes and how they are investigated.

Lecturers 

• Professor Laura Domínguez, University of Southampton (UK)
• Dr Ana Paula Palacios, University of Greenwich (UK)
• Dr Eloi Puig-Mayenco, Kings College Univeristy of London (UK)
• Dr Michael Putnam, Pennsylvania State University (USA), University of Greenwich (UK)
• Professor Montserrat Sanz Yagüe, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies
• Professor Roumyana Slabakova, University of Southampton (UK), Norwegian University of Science and Technology
• Dr Michael Wiper, University Carlos III (Spain)
• Open Lecture, Friday 9 July 2021 - Professor Lydia White, McGill University

Provisional timetable (BST Time Zone)

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Brief description of courses

Living with two languages: Heritage Language speakers and their parents 

Professor Laura Domínguez, University of Southampton (UK)

In this course we will investigate two main processes and outcomes of bilingual acquisition: heritage language acquisition and native language attrition. In both cases, a speaker is exposed to input from two different languages but with different quantitative and qualitative properties. Some of the main characteristics and typical outcomes of bilingualism in these contexts will be explored using data from recent studies as evidence.

A look at L3 acquisition: theories, methods and future directions

Dr Eloi Puig-Mayenco, Kings College Univeristy of London (UK)

The focus of this session is to present a critical overview of the field of L3/Ln acquisition with special emphasis on morphosyntactic transfer. I will first present the most recent theories and hypotheses in the field and examine the relevant empirical data that is available to date. I will then discuss some methodological choices that one needs to bear in mind when designing a study with transfer as its main focus of study. The session will finish with the discussion of some potential directions for future research regarding both transfer selection and L3 developmental trajectories.

Statistical Analysis

Dr Ana Paula Palacios, Univeristy of Greenwich (UK), Dr Michael Wiper University Carloss III, Madrid (Spain)

This course revises some key ideas in statistical testing with application to linguistics including statistical logic (ideas of estimation hypothesis tests), testing for relationships and comparing groups (chi2 tests of association and independence) and linear models (ANOVA and regression).

Multilingual grammars from a Nanosyntactic perspective: An overview

Dr Michael Putnam, Pennsylvania State University (USA), University of Greenwich (UK)

Bi- and multilingual grammars present interesting and exciting challenges for linguists and cognitive scientists more broadly. In this mini course we take a detailed look at the properties of bilingual grammars - focusing specifically on late L2 and heritage L1 grammars - through the lens of Nanosyntax (Starke, 2009, 2011; Baunaz et al., 2018; Putnam, 2019), which is a formal approach to grammar that, although similar to models to employ some version of Feature Reassembly (Lardiere, 2008, 2009; Putnam et al, 2019), offers exciting new opportunities to interpret the structure of language. This session will revise the core architecture of Nanosyntax, its application to bi/multilingual data, and a discussion of its compatibility with experimental approaches.

Input and evidence in bilingualism

Professor Roumyana Slabakova, University of Southampton (UK)

In this course, we will be concerned with the second factor of language design (Chomsky, 2005), the linguistic experience, and its effect on bilingual language acquisition. We will assume a broad definition of bilingual to include children bilingual from birth, child L2 learners, heritage language bilinguals and adult L2 speakers. The linguistic experience is in constant interplay with the first factor (the genetic endowment, or UG) and the third factor (principles not specific to the faculty of language). We will examine its contribution, but also its limitations, to the various conditions of language acquisition.

Discoveries of the language sciences in relation to second language acquisition

Professor Montserrat Sanz Yagüe, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

Every process of second language acquisition (SLA) includes phenomena like the following: 1) stagnation at the low-intermediate level, with a regression in the capacity to produce some expressions that had been apparently mastered already. 2) A difference between the production and comprehension capacities, which is reversed over time; in the first stages of SLA, one can produce more than one can understand. After achieving an intermediate level, one can understand much more than one can produce. These phenomena can be understood better if we resort to some discoveries of the language sciences: linguistic theory provides us with clues about the nature of language that explains some of the SLA phenomena. Numerous psycholinguistic studies explain the differences between production and comprehension mechanisms. We will discuss these issues in this class.