Research subject The bilingual individual
In research on the bilingual individual, bi-/multilingualism is investigated in situations of informal language acquisition in authentic language environments as well as in formal language learning in classrooms. This is done from both cognitive and social perspectives.
Key issues concern language development, use, perception, processing and loss in both early multilingual children and adult language learners. The focus is on all linguistic levels – phonetic and phonological, morphological and lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic – as well as on both spoken, written, and signed language.
Common questions concern universal features of learner language, influences from other languages (especially the first language), how communicative and interactional skills develop over time, and effects of individual differences in learning age, language aptitude, motivation, and memory capacity. The research is partly anchored in the research field Second Language Acquisition (SLA), which in turn draws theoretical and methodological inspiration from, e.g., general linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and classroom-oriented learning research.
Experimental methods are often used, where data comes from language testing or brain imaging, but there are also longitudinal case studies, as well as corpus-based research, where data consists of learners' spontaneous or elicited language production.
Related research subject
Bilingualism
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Researchers
Niclas Abrahamsson
Professor

José Alemán Bañón
Universitetslektor

Tatiana Antontchik
Administrativ studierektor, Doktorand

Rebecca Borg
Doktorand

Emanuel Bylund Spångberg
Professor

Kenneth Hyltenstam
Professor emeritus

Caroline Kerfoot
Professor emerita

Gunnar Norrman
Universitetslektor

Marta Quevedo Rodriguez
Doktorand
Susan Sayehli
Universitetslektor

Klara Skogmyr Marian
Docent, Universitetslektor

Maryann Su Lin Tan
Doktorand

Research groups
Calendar
Departments and centres
Research is conducted at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism at the Department of Swedish Language an Multilingualism (Svefler).
The Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism