Does language influence the way we think and reason about reality? If so, what happens if youspeak more than one language? These questions have been at the centre stage of the field ofpsycholinguistics since the early 2000’s. The aim of this article is to review the state-of-the-artin research on language and thought, focusin...

This paper discusses the notion of language aptitude as a factor contributing to successful language acquisition achievements in polyglots. The difficulty in distinguishing between what is, indeed, language aptitude and what is language awareness is the main focus of the paper. A polyglot is operationalized here as a person w...

Den relativt nyvunna insikten att den slutliga behärskningsnivån i ett andraspråk(L2) hos tidiga inlärare inte alltid (eller ens särskilt ofta) är helt ochhållet jämförbar med den hos infödda talare har lett till ett ifrågasättande av inlärningsålder som orsaken till denna »nästan» (snarare än helt) inföddlikaL2-behärskning. ...

The present study uses event-related potentials to investigate how crosslinguistic (dis)similarities modulate anticipatory processing in the second language (L2). Participants read predictive stories in English that made a genitive construction consisting of a third-person singular possessive pronoun and a kinship noun (e.g.,...

Syntactic templates serve as schemas, allowing speakers to describe complex events in a systematic fashion. Motion events have long served as a prime example of how different languages favor different syntactic frames, in turn biasing their speakers toward different event conceptualizations. However, there is also variability...

Tankesmedjan Humtank diskuterar hur en ambitiösare flerspråkig agenda kan bli verklighet. Artikeln placerar frågan om språkkunskaper inom vad som kallas språkpolitik, med målet att uppvärdera språk som ett nyckelområde för humanistisk kunskapsförsörjning.  

Det här är en vägledning om språkinlärning – med konkreta tips om hur du som har svenska som förstaspråk kan planera möten, sköta rekrytering och hantera det dagliga arbetet på en arbetsplats där det talas många språk.

Du får också veta mer om hur du kan öka den ömsesidiga förståelsen i kommunikationen med människor som...

This study documents change over time and across proficiency levels in French second-language (L2) speakers’ practices for initiating complaints. Prior research has shown that speakers typically initiate complaints in a stepwise manner that indexes the contingent, moral, and delicate nature of the activity. Although elementar...

The question of staccato rhythm in Stockholm's multiethnolect is investigated by comparing nPVIV measurements of the speech of 36 adult male speakers. The men, ages 24-43, come from a stratified sample of social classes and racial groups. Three contextual styles were recorded and analyzed: informal, formal, and very formal. T...

It is well established that access to the bilingual lexicon is non-selective: even in an entirely monolingual context, elements of the non-target language are active. Research has also shown that activation of the non-target language is greater at higher proficiency levels, suggesting that it may be proficiency that drives cr...

This paper investigates trends in the study of Modern languages or second foreign languages (SFLs) in Swedish lower secondary school between 2000 and 2018. Over the last decades, SFLs, i.e. French, German and Spanish, have been the target of several policy measures as a response to a declining interest. However, few reports o...

Hur gynnar man bäst humaniora i Sverige och internationellt? Ska man ge röst åt muntergökens kvittrande eller olyckskorpens klagosång? Ska man påverka den kunskapspolitik som villkorar verksamheten eller uppmana till självrannsakan bland humanister?

Vad ska vi ha universiteten till? Hur sprids den akademiska kunskapen inom samhällsvetenskap och humaniora och hur används den, till vad? Det är angelägna frågor att ställa, eftersom de frammanar en diskussion som behöver föras fortlöpande. En sådan diskussion måste inkludera flertalet forskningsområden. Den måste vara framåt...

This study examines the interactional workings of multi-unit turns that have an initial turn-constructional unit that re-says the immediately prior single-unit turn produced by another speaker. Based on cases in English, Portuguese, and French, our analysis shows that resayings do confirming and also 1) index the speaker's ri...

For half a century or more, semilingualism has been a controversial – much debated and much derided – idea. The present paper engages with some facets of this history. It traces the formation and early circulation in its context of origin: Sweden's nascent fields of bilingualism research and minority education. The paper anal...

Utredningen om ett utvecklat innovationsstöd vid lärosätena riktar tydligt in sig på kommersialisering för industriell utveckling. Men nyttiggörande av forskning är ett bredare begrepp, skriver nio forskare vid den Vinnova­finansierade forskningsplattformen Making Universities Matter. 

This article presents an edited conversation between Kenneth Hyltenstam, Christopher Stroud, Linus Salö and David Karlander. Its main topic is the rise and consolidation of bilingualism research/multilingualism research as a demarcated subject area in Swedish academe. The article delves into this history via the professional,...

It has recently been suggested that bilingualism, rather than age of acquisition, is what underlies less than nativelike attainment in childhood L2 acquisition. Currently, however, the empirical evidence in favor of or against this interpretation remains scarce. The present study sets out to fill this gap, implementing a nove...