46° Incontro di Grammatica Generativa

Multilingualism: Social and Cognitive Dimensions

Multilingualism is a pervasive phenomenon in contemporary societies. The capacity to naturally acquire any language by any child has become the central empirical observation since the beginning of generative grammar, as it shows that, as humans, we are all biologically endowed with a language acquisition device which is naturally put into work through social interaction of the typically developing child with the external world. So, conditions internal to the cognitive system, i.e. the internal grammar with its formal properties, and external conditions, i.e. exposure to a rich enough input, are both crucial dimensions in any form of language acquisition. The dialog between the social and the cognitive dimensions is especially crucial in situations of multilingualism, raising specific issues, such as: richness of the quality and quantity of the input, age of onset, possible delays in child acquisition, necessity to distinguish between pathological delay vs unavoidable time needed in second language acquisition, the distinction among types of multiligualism/ early vs late, child vs adult ..., the possible protective role of multilingualism in aging, the role of questionnaires to determine external factors, types of adapted testing etc. These issues are especially congenial with one of the research themes developed at the hosting department DISPOC within the frame of the interdisciplinary project for which it has been selected as one of the Excellence Departments of the Italian University system.
Submissions are invited for posters on issues related to multilingualism along the lines indicated above, with a special focus on the dialog between the role of grammatical constraints and the role of external conditions. Empirical domains investigated may also concern discourse situations (such as e.g. question-answers exchanges and their formal characterization, appropriate use of subject pronouns, proper mastering of clitic pronouns and topicalization structures etc...), always crucial in social interactions.
The workshop will take place in the morning of February 25th. The official language of the workshop is English.