Multilingualism in the New and Old World
The Project
"Multilingualism in the Old and New Worlds" is an ambitious, research-based teaching project that uses digital and virtual methods, and combines them with concrete sociolinguistic field research. Developed by Prof. Dr. Aria Adli, from UzK, and Prof. Dr. Gregory Guy, from New York University, and on the basis of their last year's project, this venture is projected to test an initially "local" method onto more global and intercontinental issues.
The focus at this stage is on Languages in Latin America, in which autochthonous and Afro-Latin American minority speech communities in the New World are observed and compared with the multilingualism and diversity of varieties in Europe (especially on the Iberian Peninsula). Additionally, the connection between these languages and varieties and Spanish and Portuguese is put in a historical context.
The innovative didactical aspect is the virtual field trip students will be able to do throughout the course to several of these New World speaking communities. This excursion begins in Havana (Afro-Cuban Spanish), and runs through in the Yucatán region in Mexico (Yucatan Maya & Spanish). Next, we venture into the Peruvian capital of Lima (Chanka Quechua & Spanish), and subsequently travel to Bahia (Afro-brazilian Portuguese), to then finish at the brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazilian Portuguese & Hunsrick). In each location, and with the help of a network of local consultants, authentic sociolinguistic interviews were performed in their native languages.
The interviews with the speakers are already transcribed, and translated, and are waiting to be archived in a sustainable format in the SAMD Database at the Language Archive Cologne (LAC), whose bases were laid out in the first funding period. The students will carry out small-group projects and term papers with this empirical data.
Seminar summary
Click on the following infographic to learn more about how our seminar went.
Introduction
Prof. Aria Adli
Professor of Linguistics (UoC)
Aria Adli specializes on grammatical variation. He tries to explain why certain grammatical forms (such as word order or pronouns) are preferred or used more frequently than others by speakers. He does so by taking into account language-internal as well as language-external factors. With regard to language-internal factors, he works on the syntax of a sentence in its speech context and on information structure. With regard to language-external factors, his research focuses on the role of social stratification, lifestyle according to Bourdieu, and register. His approach builds on language comparison (with emphasis on French, Spanish, Catalan, and Persian) and on cross-cultural analysis. His empirical methods include field work, corpus analysis, acceptability judgments, statistics, and computer simulations.
Prof. Gregory Guy
Professor of Linguistics (NYU)
Gregory Guy specializes in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology. In sociolinguistics he has worked extensively on language variation and change, with emphasis on variation and linguistic theory, social aspects of variation and change and the social and linguistic distribution of language change in progress, and quantitative research methodology (the statistical modelling of variability). His current research focuses on the representation of language variation in linguistic theory. Other interests include phonological and syntactic variables in English, Portuguese and Spanish, historical linguistics, Romance linguistics (his areas of language specialization include English, Portuguese and Spanish), phonological theory, pidgin and creole studies, phonetics, and sociolinguistic universals.
Matt Stuck, TA
Matt is currently pursuing a PhD in linguistics, with a dissertation research that focuses on how the Spanish sound system of bilinguals living in New York City is shaped by exposure and use of English and Spanish across the lifespan and at present. He has worked in the Second Language Acquisition lab at the Graduate Center CUNY as a research assistant from 2015 to the present. Matt also worked in partnership with US K-12 Public Schools on home language questionnaire design, and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses throughout the CUNY system in introductory linguistic theory, language pedagogy, and sociolinguistics, and he has been a research assistant at NYU in the linguistics department from 2018 to today.
University of Cologne (UoC) and NYU in numbers
UoC | NYU |
| Founded in 1388 (closed in 1798, re-established in 1919) | Founded in 1831 |
| >51.000 students | >50.000 students |
| 6 faculties | 19 schools and colleges |
| Downtown area of Cologne | More than 171 buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn |