Experimental Linguistics talk by Daria Bahtina on receptive multilingualism in typologically distant languages 

For more information about this talk and forthcoming talks please check the website: www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/m.e.vanderziel/ELiTU2010.html

Abstract

Lingua receptiva is a mode of multilingual communication in which speakers of different languages use their own language or variety and have enough competencies to understand each other. These competencies are the ensemble of linguistic, mental, interactional as well as intercultural repertoires that are activated when listeners are receiving linguistic actions in their ‘passive’ language or variety (Rehbein, ten Thije, Verschik to appear).

The research has been predominantly conceptualised around notions like ‘intelligibility of closely related languages’ (Wolff 1966), ‘semicommunication’ (Haugen1981), or ‘intercompréhension’ (Grin 2008), which presumes that lingua receptiva typically occurs between speakers of typologically close languages. Yet, receptive competencies that help interlocutors align and maintain congruent understanding very often occur in genetically distant languages.

Estonia with almost one third of Russian speakers can serve a good example here: users of respective Finno-Ugric and East-Slavic languages demonstrate both acquired inter-comprehensibility and certain meta-linguistic skills. The experimental research is designed to elicit minimal prerequisites for and effective mechanisms behind lingua receptiva. The Skype call experiment is constructed as a problem-solving task where interlocutors are invited to use their mother tongues. The analysis is grounded in literature on alignment strategies (Pickering & Garrod 2004) combined with functional pragmatics (Rehbein, Kameyama & Maleck 1994). More specifically, the speaker/hearer communicative apparatus is used to capture the process of establishing shared knowledge on various levels (e.g. semantics, syntax or pragmatics).

The current paper presents results from the pilot study and discusses performance within the experiment as compared to scores in L2 tests since mechanisms of lingua receptiva and ways to overcome misalignment are claimed to differ depending on the L2 pre-knowledge. A list of contact-induced processes as well as recurrent meta-linguistic devices is presented to argue for this mode’s potential.

The ELiTU-talks are organised by:

• Ana Aguilar Guevara
• Anneloes Canestrelli
• Liv Persson
• Marie-Elise van der Ziel