Language contact phenomena in multilingual first language acquisition: Theory, data, methods

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan Hartmann
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 496468900

This network brings together researchers working on multilingual first language acquisition from a usage-based perspective. It has two major goals: firstly, we want to consider the theoretical implications of the usage-based approach – which are largely based on studies of monolingual acquisition – for multilingual acquisition, thus refining and potentially extending the usage-based theory of language acquisition. This is closely related to methodological and corpus-linguistic questions that are discussed in the network. The second goal of the network is therefore to develop rich corpus-linguistic resources for the study of bilingual language acquisition as well as advanced quantitative methods for analyzing them.As for the theoretical goals, the network aims at addressing key research questions pertaining to multilingual language learning: The usage-based approach to language acquisition assumes that children learn their language(s) by abstracting away patterns from the concrete instances of language use they encounter. This raises the question which patterns are actually learnt, how patterns from more than one language interact in the process of multilingual language learning, and how these patterns correlate with the input the children receive. On the methodological side, a key tenet of usage-based research is identifying those patterns using data-driven statistical methods. Various approaches such as the traceback method or the Chunk-Based Learner have been developed in the context of usage-based language acquisition studies. It is one of the methodological goals of the network to further develop and refine these methods. Over the course of three years, we want to intensify existing collaborations between the network members and initiate new ones. The network members commit to pursuing a number of collaborative projects in different groups in order to tackle theoretical and methodological challenges and to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of multilingual language acquisition. At six project meetings, the network members discuss their projects with key researchers from the fields of usage-based linguistics, child language acquisition research, multilingualism, and corpus linguistics: Prof. Dr. Adele Goldberg (Princeton), Prof. Dr. Jeanine Treffers-Daller (Reading University), Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Schmid (Munich), Dr. Özlem Çetinoğlu (Stuttgart) and Prof. Dr. Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie Mellon University).

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Antje Quick