Course Description

[CANCELED]
In the world, there are more multilinguals than monolingual speakers. The human capacity for language is unique and infinite, and the multilingual brain/mind is nature’s standard. We will begin the course with discussions about how bilingualism is defined and measured; we will then continue to understand what it means to “acquire” a new language. Is learning a new subsequent language different from learning a first language? Is there a critical period for language learning? In order to answer these questions, we will consider different models of bilingualism. We will also consider linguistic behaviors of bilingual speakers such as code-switching and how it is possible to use two languages in the same utterance. We will focus on the psycholinguistic bases of bilingualism and address questions such as: What are the effects of bilingualism on other domains of cognition? What do imaging studies tell us about the bilingual brain?

Area Tags: Acquisition, Psycholinguistics, Language Production, Perception

(Session 2) [CANCELED] Monday/Thursday 10:30-11:50

Location: [CANCELED]

Instructor: Carla Contemori

Carla Contemori is currently Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Texas at El Paso. She completed her PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of Siena (Italy) in 2011, and worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Pennsylvania State University (PA, USA), and at the University of Reading (UK). In her present day research, Dr. Contemori uses a variety of experimental techniques (off-line comprehension and production, self-paced reading and listening, eye-tracking, syntactic priming) with adults and children to investigate the underlying nature of first and second language development and processing.