MUTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY: LANGUAGE, CULTURE, COGNITION ONLINE EVENT WORKSHOP PROGRAMME 24-25 June 2021 SURREY.AC.UK OUR SPONSORS INTRODUCTION Despite being perceived as unique, self- Our timely inter-disciplinary two-day contained systems, most languages of the workshop is the first of its kind to examine world are not isolated entities, and exist in mutual intelligibility from cultural and linguistic continua with other related cognitive as well as linguistic perspectives. varieties. Related languages share many By bringing together researchers from a properties, giving rise to the global range of fields, this workshop aims to Surrey Morphology Group (SMG) is a The institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) phenomenon of mutual intelligibility, where provide a foundation for the development of linguistics research centre dedicated to the The Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at a speaker of one language can use their multi-disciplinary research projects on study of language diversity and its theoretical the University of Surrey sponsors workshops variety to efficiently communicate with a mutual intelligibility. The goal is to gain a consequences. and Fellowships at the ‘cutting edge’ of speaker of another language, and vice versa broader understanding of this significant and Its research combines the investigation of science, engineering, social science and the (e.g. Spanish and Portuguese). complex global phenomenon, and identify grammatical categories in a broad sample of humanities. Through this scheme the Whilst research in this area has typically how various theoretical and empirical languages with the use of explicit formal and Institute fosters interdisciplinary been associated with the realm of linguistics, research methods can be combined in future statistical frameworks for the expression of collaborations and encourages a flow of a cultural studies approach to mutual research. typological and theoretical generalizations. international scholars to visit, enjoy their intelligibility demonstrates how it facilitates SMG has received funding from the European stay at Surrey and leave behind excellent intercultural exchange between Research Council, the Economic and Social ideas and innovations. communities, challenging the misconception Research Council, the Arts and Humanities of languages as discrete units that has Research Council, the British Academy and ias.surrey.ac.uk reinforced national and racial essentialism. Workshop Chair: the Leverhulme Trust, among others. From the point of view of cognition, Dr Nadezda Christopher, University of meanwhile, empirical research methods can Surrey smg.surrey.ac.uk shed light on the biological underpinnings of mutual intelligibility, i.e. what neural Organising committee: correlates and cognitive processes underlie Dr Catherine Barbour, University of Surrey language comprehension and by extension Dr Katie Gilligan, University of Surrey enable speakers of different languages to successfully communicate with each Administrative support: other. Ms Vicki Blamey and Ms Penny Everson (University of Surrey) 2 3 SURREY.AC.UK UNIVERSITY OF SURREY PROGRAMME DAY 2 – FRIDAY 25TH JUNE DAY 1 – THURSDAY 24TH JUNE (UK TIME ) (UK TIME) 12.45 – 13:00 Welcome Remarks 12.50 – 13.00 Welcome back 13:00 – 14:00 Keynote Talk: Mutual Intelligibility between Closely Related Languages 13.00 – 14.00 Keynote Talk: Estimated Mutual Intelligibility of Kurdish - Eve Eppler in Europe - Charlotte Gooskens 14.00 – 14.15 Break 14.00 – 14.15 Break 14.15 – 14.45 Mutual intelligibility in Philippine Austronesian languages: The case of 14.15 – 14.45 Receptive multilingualism in scenarios involving one dominant Tagalog and Bikol - Orlyn Joyce D. Esquivel variety - Slavomír Čéplö 14.45 – 15.15 L3 word recognition based on non-native competence in an L2 - Jacopo 14.45 – 15.15 Intelligibility in Natural Languages and Formal Languages - Harald Saturno Hammarström 15.15 – 15.45 Word Order Transfer on Learning Mandarin Writing for Hong Kong 15.15 – 15.45 Intelligibility across Romance languages: the role of inflexional (Cantonese-Speaking) Learners - Yijun Hu morphology - Chiara Cappellaro 15.45 – 16.00 Break 15.45 – 16.00 Break 16.00 – 17.00 Keynote Talk: Interview with artist, poet and translator Andreea 16.00 – 17.00 Keynote Talk: Miniature artificial languages: a promising approach to Birsanu study SLA - Bertram Opitz 4 5 SURREY.AC.UK UNIVERSITY OF SURREY KEYNOTE SPEAKERS Charlotte Gooskens Bertam Opitz Eve Eppler Andreea Birsanu University of Groningen University of Surrey University of Roehampton Andreea Birsanu, (born 1998, Bacău, Charlotte (BA in Comparative Linguistics, Bertram Opitz studied Biophysics at the Eva Eppler is Associate Professor of Romania) is an artist based in Galicia, north- University of Aarhus, Denmark; MA in Russian State University in Moscow, Russia. Linguistics at the University of Roehampton, west Spain, where she emigrated with her General Linguistics, Leiden University, the He was a PhD student at the Max-Planck- London. She completed her MA in English family in 2005. Her artistic project Silvatiica, Netherlands; PhD in Linguistics, University of Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain and German Language and Literature at the an exploration of Galician nature in art, was Nijmegen, the Netherlands) is an associate Sciences, Leipzig and received his doctoral University of Vienna where she later worked developed during the pandemic in 2020. She professor of European Linguistics at the degree in 2000. Until autumn 2001 he as teaching and research assistant to Prof believes in the power of artistic creation for University of Groningen and an adjunct continued working as a post-doc researcher Dieter Kastovsky. A post-graduate grant from social change, with particular commitment associate professor at the University of New and then moved to Saarland University as an the Austrian Ministry of Science enabled her to the rural sphere, feminism, and England, Australia. Assistant Professor for Cognitive to move to University College London for her motherhood. She commissions projects via Her research focuses on the perceptual and Neuroscience. Bertram joined the Brain & PhD. In London she got involved with the her personal website and Etsy shop. Andreea communicative effects of language variation, Behaviour Group at the University of Surrey Language Interaction in Plurilingual and is currently undertaking a literary translation e.g. language attitudes, speaker identity and in August 2012 as a Professor for Plurilectal Speakers group and set up a project from Romanian to Galician, as well as mutual intelligibility between closely related Neuroimaging. He has been leading the Brain transcription and coding system for creating the first illustrated Romanian- languages. She has authored more than 120 and Behaviour Group since 2015. multilingual data (LIDES, 2000). Her PhD on Galician dictionary. She is a keen writer and articles and book chapters, and served as a Bertram’s research focuses on the neural structural aspects of German-English code- runs the project ‘Mulleres que escriben en guest editor for several special issues of underpinnings of learning and memory, with switching is conducted within one of the first galego’ (Women Who Write in Galician) to linguistic journals; she also co-organised a his primary interest being in the neural cognitive theories of language as a promote writing by women in the language. large number of international conferences mechanisms of language acquisition and system, Word Grammar (Hudson 1990, Andreea speaks Romanian, Galician and and workshops. what factors influence the learning process. 2007). It generated the ‘Dependency Spanish fluently. She is a consultant and co-investigator in Bertram is also interested in the functional Distance Hypothesis for bilingual code- various international projects examining architecture of different memory systems switching’ which has been tested on Website: https://silvatiica.com/ mutual intelligibility between closely related and the processes by which information is German-English and Chinese-English data languages (e.g. Scandinavian languages, transferred between these memory systems. which support it. Romance languages, Finnish-Estonian, In current research projects he investigates Since then Eva Eppler has been working on Czech-Slovak, Kurdish dialects in the Middle the processes of creating new enduring various aspects of multilingualism, including East, Gurage dialects of Ethiopia, languages memory traces and modulating existing testing predictions of theoretical frameworks of the Pacific Islands of Vanuatu, dialects of ones. Other projects focus on how we can on code-mixed data and multilingualism in Indonesia and Nigeria). She was a guest exert control over our memories, and how audio-visual translation. Her recent interest researcher at Firat University (Turkey), these control processes could be trained. in Kurdish has led her to pursue more University of New England (Australia), and The main focus of these projects lies on impactful applied topics in collaborations University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and training induced changes in the neural with a geographer/GIS expert, such as a currently is a fellow at the Polish Institute of network in healthy participants and patient Perceptual Dialectological study of Kurdish. Advanced Studies (PIASt) in Warsaw. samples. She has written and edited six books, To achieve a comprehensive understanding published nine peer reviewed journal of learning and memory systems Bertram articles