Collaborative
Research Center: Multilingualism
Since its founding in July 1999,
the Collaborative Research Centre on Multilingualism has worked on documenting,
analysing, and describing language in the context of multilingualism. This
includes patterns of language use in multilingual environments, bilingual
language acquisition, and the role of multilingualism and language contact in language
change. The Centre consists of a network of individual research projects following
a range of different research paradigms, each with its own theoretical
approach, but united by a number of common interests and basic assumptions
regarding multilingualism. At the core lies the conviction that human language
capacity is inherently geared towards multilingualism and that multilingualism
has been the rule rather than the exception throughout human history, both on a
societal and an individual level.
Three aspects have formed the main
focus of research at the Centre thus far: (a) the development of
multilingualism on the individual level, i.e. the acquisition of more than one
language (and, in particular, more than one grammatical system) by individual
speakers; (b) functional conditions and patterns of communication in
multilingual environments; and (c) processes of language change under
conditions of multilingualism and language contact, as well as linguistic
variation as a cause or an effect of change through contact.
In the fourth and current funding
period (2008–2011), projects have been grouped into two branches, of which each
will further focus on a central set of common issues. Four projects form the branch
Multilingual Language Acquisition, where the mutual focus lies in the
nature of “critical phases” in language acquisition. Eight projects form the branch
on Historical Aspects of Multilingualism and Variation, dealing with questions
concerning language change and language contact. A new shared focus in this
area will be the analysis of recent or ongoing language contact situations and will
therefore expand the research of language change into the realm of spoken
language.
Languages currently studied at the
Research Centre include the following: Danish, Catalan, English, Faroese,
French, German, German Sign Language, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese,
Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish, as well as several historical or regional
sub-varieties of some of these languages.
The Research Centre is also proud
to produce research results that have immediate relevance for short or
medium-term practical applications. The Centre has already been able to provide
a substantial amount of research-based counselling and information offers for
others. A new branch of five practical transfer-oriented projects was
established in 2007. These projects have the goal of developing concrete
solutions for practical problems relating to multilingual situations based on
research results derived from other projects.
Since all projects work empirically on the basis of
natural linguistic data, the final focus of the work at the Centre is to ensure
that these data are documented and preserved in such a way that they remain
useful and accessible to the research community beyond the lifetime of the
Centre itself. To this end, a project has been established with the task of
developing computer assisted methods for the creation and analysis of
multilingual data.
Projects in Group E, Acquisition of Multilingualism, investigate
the simultaneous acquisition of more than one first language and the successive
acquisition of additional languages, comparing both with monolingual first
language development. Research is also
conducted on language disorders in bilinguals.
(Coordinator: Tanja Kupisch)
The eight projects in this group (H1, H3, H5, H6, H8 and H 9 as well as K4
and K8) have emerged from groups H and K respectively for the SFB’s third
phase. Projects in Group H: Historical Aspects of
Multilingualism and Variance, deal with the influence of
multilingualism and language contact situations on processes of language
change.
(Coordinator: Kurt Braunmüller)
A fourth group, the
Transfer Group T, Multilingualism, was founded in March 2007. The projects in Group
T develop and test practical applications based on the results attained by the
Research Centre since 1999 together with external cooperation partners. Their
transfer into practice is scientifically evaluated.
(Coordinator: Kristin Bührig)
Funding Periods
1999 - 2002 First funding period
2002 - 2005 Second funding period
2005 - 2008 Third funding period
2007 - 2010 Transfer Group: Multilingualism
2008 - 2011 Fourth funding period
