Multilingual

The term multilingualism can refer to rather different phenomena. Sociolinguists distinguish:

Multilingualism at the personal level

A multilingual person is, in the broadest definition of multilingualism, anyone with communicative skills in more than one language, be it active or passive. More specifically, the terms bilingual and trilingual are used to describe comparable situations in which two or three languages are involved.

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Multilingual speakers have acquired at least one language during childhood, the so-called L1. L1-type languages are acquired without formal education, by mechanisms heavily disputed. A rather broadly held, yet nearly as broadly criticised view, is taken by the American linguist Noam Chomsky, whose professional life has so far mainly been dedicated to the description of what he calls the human language module, the mechanism that enables us to recreate correctly the rules that speakers around us apply to the language they speak. This language module, according to Chomsky, wears out over time, and is not normally available by puberty, which explains the relatively poor results adolescents and adults have in language learning, as compared to young children.

Related Topics:
Linguist - Noam Chomsky

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Multilingual speakers have extra languages at their disposal. These can be either "L1s" or L2s, languages that has been learnt at a later age. If language learning is a cognitive process, rather than a language module, as the school led by Stephen Krashen suggests, there would only be relative, not categorical, differences between the two types of language learning.

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Even if someone is a highly proficient bilingual at the performance or output level, his so-called bilingual competence may not be so balanced. Linguists have distinguished various types of bilingual competence, which can roughly be put into three categories:

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• coordinate bilingualism: the linguistic elements (words, phrases) in the speaker's mind are all related to their own unique concepts. That means, a French-English bilingual speaker of this type (as can be found in large numbers in Quebec) has different associations for 'chien' and for 'dog'. This type of bilingual speaker usually belongs to different cultural communities that do not frequently interact. These speakers are known to use very different intonation and pronunciation features, and not seldom assert the feeling of having different personalities attached to each of their languages.
• compound bilingualism: speakers of this type attach most of their linguistic elements to the same concepts. For them, a 'chien' and a 'dog' are two words for the same concept. Those speakers are reported to have less extreme differences in their pronunciations. Such speakers are often found in minority language communities, or amongst fluent L2-speakers.
• subordinate bilingualism: the linguistic elements of one of the speaker's languages are only available through elements of the speaker's other language. This type is typical of, but not restricted to, beginning L2-learners.

Coordinate and compound bilinguals are reported to have a higher cognitive proficiency, and are found to be better L2-learners at a later age, than monolinguals. The early discovery that concepts of the world can be labelled in more than one fashion puts those bilinguals in the lead. There is, however, also a phenomenon known as distractive bilingualism. When acquisition of the first language is interrupted and insufficient, or unstructured language input follows from the second language, as sometimes happens with immigrant children, the speaker can end up with two languages both mastered below the monolingual standards. The vast majority of immigrant children, however, acquire both languages normally.

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It should be noted that the distinction between compound and coordinate bilingualism has come under scrutiny and this comparison is not currently fashionable. When studies are done of multilinguals most are found to show behavior intermediate between compound and coordinate bilingualism. Some authors have suggested that the distinction should only be made at the level of grammar rather than vocabulary, others use "coordinate bilingual" as a synonym for one who has learned two languages from birth, and others have proposed dropping the distinction altogether.

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Receptive bilingualism occurs when someone has the ability to understand a language, but (for various reason) doesn't speak it. Receptive bilingualism can occur when a child realizes that they are dominant in a community language over the native language of their parents, and choose to speak to their parents only in the community language. While some see this as a failure to become bilingual, families who adopt this mode of communication can be highly functional, and receptive bilinguals can rapidly achieve oral fluency when placed in situations where they are required to speak the subordinate language.

Related Topics:
Receptive bilingualism - Community language

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