Faculty of Language, Literature and Humanities - RUEG

In linguistics, language contact was often regarded as exceptional, and multilingualism was seen as a potential problem. According to this deficit-oriented view, linguistic practices and competences of multilingual speakers tended to be investigated from the point of view of deviations from a prescriptive monolingual norm. Recently, this perspective has changed in favor of acknowledging linguistic diversity as a normal characteristic of human languages, now regarding bilinguals as regular native speakers (e.g. Grosjean 2008, Bayram 2013, Rothman & Treffers-Daller 2014, Scontras et al. 2015, Guijarro-Fuentes & Schmitz 2015, Kupisch & Rothman 2016, Schroeder 2016, Bak 2017).
The Research Unit “Emerging grammars in language contact situations: A comparative approach” (RUEG; https://www.linguistik.hu-berlin.de/en/rueg) has picked up on this change in perspective, pursuing an integrated, large-scale investigation driven by a positive, multilingual perspective on heritage speakers’ linguistic behaviour. Accordingly, we think of dynamics, rather than vulnerability, of differences in the development of linguistic domains, rather than incomplete acquisition, and of innovation, rather than attrition and loss in heritage speaker varieties.
This international conference marks the completion of RUEG’s first 3-year period. It aims to bring together researchers from different fields who study the dynamics of language contact from a positive, multilingual perspective.
Our conference will have three thematic sessions dedicated to different aspects of heritage speakers’ language production and comprehension (“Attrition vs. Innovation”, “Transfer vs. Internal Dynamics”, and “Methods in research on patterns outside standard language”), and a poster session. The three thematic sessions will take place on Feb 22, 2021, and Feb 23, 2021, and will include talks of invited speakers.

Invited speakers:
- Ad Backus (Tilburg University)
- Tanja Kupisch (Universität Konstanz)
- Maria M. Piñango (Yale University)
- Anatol Stefanowitsch (Freie Universität Berlin)

On the first day, Feb 21, 2021, the conference will connect with the “International Mother Language Day”, focusing on educational implications for multilingual settings. This opening session will include a live talk by another invited speaker, Janet Fuller (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), followed by a discussion.
The full program of the workshop is available on our website at https://www.linguistik.hu-berlin.de/en/rueg/conference2021.
If you want to attend the conference as a guest (free of charge), please register by e-mail until Feb 18, 2021. Contact for registration: annika.labrenz@hu-berlin.de.