The awarded ACLC proposals are:

Crossing language borders

prof. dr. E.O. Aboh (UvA), dr. F.K. Ameka (LEI), dr. M.C.P.C Parafita Couto (LEI)

Multilinguals easily weave their languages together like artists engaged in a colourful painting on a canvas. This process is called code-switching/code-mixing (CSCM). In multilingual communities like in Benin (West Africa) and Belize (Central America), CSCM is the norm in conversations, but we still don’t know how speakers mentally adapt to such multilingual contexts. Using analytic tools of the language sciences, the project seeks to understand how multilingual speakers do it. The findings can impact policies and practices of language use in education in these and similar multilingual communities where language mixing is the daily practice.

How literacy shapes language learning: a longitudinal approach

dr. S.J. Andringa (UvA)

If you cannot read and write, then you probably do not know what a word is exactly, or that a letter represents one of the sounds we can make when speaking. Without such knowledge, it may be difficult to learn a language. We know that literacy imbues all kinds of cognitive changes, but we do not understand well yet what these changes mean for how a language is learned. This project tries to understand how literacy changes language acquisition by following groups of emerging readers (children and adults) longitudinally, when learning a language and simultaneously learning to read and write.