After successful previous conferences in the UK, New Zealand, the United States, Australia and Denmark, the 6th Variation and Language Processing Conference (VALP6) will be held at Universidade de Vigo from 26-28 June 2024.
In its first edition, at the University of Chester (UK) in 2011, this conference was designed to bring together the fields of psycholinguistics and variational sociolinguistics under the following description:
Traditionally, linguistic variation has been the concern of (variationist) sociolinguistics and work in language processing has fallen under the domain of psycholinguistics and cognitive science. Recently, however, this apparent division has been questioned because work in sociolinguistics now encompasses experimental techniques and work in psycholinguistics has begun to engage with variable naturalistic data. As the interests of these fields converge, new questions about the relationship between linguistic variation and social cognition have been generated e.g. How is linguistic variation stored in the mind? How is the ‘linguistic’ and the ‘extra-linguistic’ linked? How do we best model these connections?
We are pleased to announce the continuation of the discussion at VALP6 in Vigo. This conference provides a venue for researchers coming from traditionally distinct fields, such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, experimental phonetics, syntax and pragmatics, who work on the relationship between linguistic variation, in its widest sense, and language processing.
Plenary speakers
Montserrat Comesaña
(CIPsi, Minho University)
Abstract
The impact of bilingualism on cognitive development and academic success
Over the last decades, research on bilingualism has attracted the interest of numerous political entities, business leaders, and academic experts. This interest is fuelled not only because more than half the world’s population is bilingual (Grosjean, 2022), but also because increased language competence fosters employability and economic growth (COM, 2008). In fact, the European Union defines multilingualism as a key objective of its language policy and the “Education and Training 2020” strategic framework, leading most member states to strengthen the acquisition of a second language (L2) as part of their educational curricula. In this talk I will be discussing about the impact of the percentage of hours dedicated to second language (L2) learning (often made operative as the number of academic subjects whose vehicular language is the L2) on the first language (L1-Portuguese) skills at the sublexical, lexical and morphosyntactic levels and in psychoeducational factors such as attitude and mental openness. Note that there is no systematic study in the Iberian Peninsula, and more specifically in Portugal, thus far, that has examined this issue. This is of special relevance because empirical data regarding the effect of L2 learning in L1 skills are inconsistent, probably because similarities between languages affect language transfer, and also because of methodological differences across studies (see Pavlenko, 2000). Indeed, although there is evidence sustaining a beneficial effect of L2 immersion programs in L1 skills (e.g., Bournot-Trites & Tellowicz, 2002; Vender et al., 2021), to the best of my knowledge there are no studies which have examined this issue across schools that differ in the number of subjects that are taught in an L2 (schools including CLIL [Content and Language Integrated Learning] practices). In this regard, objectives are set at three levels: Methodological (developing the first large-scale study on sociolinguistic data and lexical decision latencies in L1 and L2 with children who are learning a L2 in the type of schools above mentioned), empirical (establishing experimental benchmark effects on sublexical and lexical processing and examining their interaction with individual variables such as age, language balance [operationalized in terms of the difference in participants’ daily use of L1 and L2], and age of language acquisition), and theoretical (refining qualitative and quantitative approaches to bilingual research, e.g., Cummins, 2000; Peeters & Dijkstra et al., 2023).
Natalia Levshina
(Radboud University)
Abstract
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Schmid
(Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Abstract
