Online-lecture WebEx
In 1989, Francois Grosjean warned us: “Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person”. In this talk, I continue this line of thinking by showing that the two languages of a bilingual child need to be studied in their own right. The studies that I will discuss concern children learning a minority (e.g., regional, migrant) language and a majority language (Dutch). They address questions about the cognitive, socioemotional and interactive mechanisms that underlie language development. The results show that mechanisms relevant for the one language can be irrelevant for the other language and vice versa, and demonstrate the importance of a contextualized approach to bilingual language development.
Elma Blom is Professor in Language Development and Multilingualism in family and educational contexts at the Department of Education and Pedagogy at Utrecht University. Her research is focused on predictors of language development, the distinction between language disorder and language delay, and developmental relationships between cognition and language. Her aim is to bring together insights from the field of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to advance our understanding of multilingual language development.
CONTACT
cyril.wealer@uni.lu