Course Description
Although models of linguistic competence often assume a monolingual language user, most people around the world are not actually monolingual, but bilingual or multilingual. What does it mean to be bilingual as opposed to monolingual? How does knowledge of two languages make bilinguals differ from monolinguals in terms of linguistic behavior? What are the consequences of bilingualism for an individual’s linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive abilities? Drawing upon data from diverse bilingual populations, this course will equip the student to begin to answer these questions through the prism of phonetic, phonological, and psycholinguistic research on bilingualism. Issues to be examined include bilingual speech perception and production; bilingual language acquisition; the mental representation of dual language knowledge; and effects of bilingualism on additional language learning and general cognition. The course will consider both the advantages and disadvantages of knowing more than one language, as well as the implications of bilingualism and multilingualism for shaping modern linguistic inquiry.
Area Tags: Phonetics, Phonology, Psycholinguistics, Speech, Perception, Language Contact
(Sessions 1 & 2) Monday/Thursday 3:00pm – 4:20pm
Location: ILC S331
Instructors: Charles Chang & Yao Yao
Charles B. Chang is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Boston University (BU), where he directs the Phonetics, Acquisition & Multilingualism Lab (PAMLab). He serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Second Language Research, Faculty Advisor to the BU Conference on Language Development, and Treasurer of the Association for Laboratory Phonology. Funded in part by a Peter Paul Career Development Professorship, the BU Center for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation, his research examines phonetic and phonological aspects of language learning, bilingualism and multilingualism, and language attrition.
Yao Yao is Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is also Associate Editor for the journal Laboratory Phonology and Area Editor for the journal Linguistics Vanguard. Yao is interested in language change and variation, heritage phonological acquisition, and speech processing in bilinguals. She has worked on multiple Chinese languages (Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, etc.) and English.
