DIVA · Disentangling variation: A crosslinguistic investigation of bilingualism and non-standardization

Disentangling variation: A crosslinguistic investigation of bilingualism and non-standardization

This project investigated the ways in which variation in the linguistic input leaves its footprint on the developmental trajectory of language growth and its final outcome in different monolingual and multilingual populations. Through eliciting and examining acceptability judgments that target different domains of grammar, this project has implemented a novel, three-way comparison across (i) monolingual, bilingual, and bilectal speakers, (ii) different domains of grammar, (iii) varying developmental trajectories within the bilingual populations, including heritage speakers and L1 attriters. The combination of on-line (reaction times) and off-line (acceptability judgments on a Likert scale) measures has provided insights into the ways the various structures are processed by the human mind. This project has brought together both the social and the neurocognitive aspects of our ability to use language, through adopting a crosslinguistic approach to the investigation of language across populations with different trajectories. Ultimately, this project has generated solid experimental evidence about language processing in monolingual vs. plurilingual mind, which within the present context of globalization and increased multilingualism throughout the lifespan, are of interest to psycholinguists, sociolinguists, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. Last, the emphasis given to non-standard languages promotes linguistic diversity, concordant with European Union’s efforts to raise awareness about minority languages, thus the results are also relevant for educational policy makers. The key objective of DIVA was to develop a multi-levelled description of language variation and its driving factors in a way that involves both the elicitation of novel data and their interpretation within a context of justification that brings together insights from both linguistics and closely allied disciplines, thus effectively creating interdisciplinary bridges between linguistics and the greater field of neurocognition. The secondary objective was to describe variation in three domains of grammar across three linguistic communities. Through comparing the attested variation across them, the DIVA project taps into the importance of factors such as language transfer, language standardization and sociolinguistic values which can be proxies for language use in different contexts and registers.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union