Research on linguistic variation suggests that usage patterns are deeply embedded in native and non-native speakers' knowledge of grammar. This study explores the transfer of these variable sociolinguistic patterns at the initial stages of third language acquisition. We elicited narratives in Portuguese from two mirror-image groups of sequential…

In two case studies of trilingual development in the home, it was not the home languages that were the strongest but the language of the respective daycare centres. This paper investigates, first, how well the trilingual children could separate their daycare language from their home languages. Then it explores the kinds of communicative…

Contexts of limited input such as trilingual families where a language is not spoken in the wider community but only by a reduced number of speakers in the home provide a unique opportunity to examine closely the relationship between a child's input and what she learns to say. Barnes reported on the relationship between maternal input and a…

Where there are two or more languages in contact, language shift is inevitable. Shift or maintenance happens at individual or societal levels due to social and psychological conditions in which community members are in. Pattern of language use in a family and the attitudes of family members towards heritage language or the language of the wider…

This article focuses on children's language alternation practices in two primary school settings. More specifically we explore how participants (children and teachers) in episodes of language alternation invoke linguistic and social identities, thereby "talking into being" language and educational ideologies. The present study is based…

This case study investigates the bilingual and trilingual codeswitching patterns of two multilinguals who grew up in a Hungarian-Romanian two-language family in Transylvania, and whose bilingual codeswitching changed into trilingual codeswitching after they moved to North America. An analysis of the speakers' discourse reveals the amounts of…

This paper reports on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the language socialisation of a group of Moroccan adolescents who migrated to Italy in the late 1990s. The approach is based on the notion of language socialisation, which sees the process of acquiring a language as linked to that of becoming a member of a culture. The participants live in…

The growing presence of children of immigrant families in the public school system in the bilingual region of Catalonia provides us with an opportunity to study how young multilingual and multicultural speakers construct their social competencies and their identity within the specific context of a gate-keeping social institution such as the…

What are the effects of globalisation on patterns of language use in the domain of media in Singapore? Rather than only cultural imperialism of hegemonic English, which is no doubt the case, the use of languages in the "mediascap" also shows the consumption of non-English languages and cultures. Though English may be the main language of…

The educational system in a multilingual society needs to reflect the authentic patterns of language use by the individuals in that society. A person who knows three or more languages presumably uses each of these languages in different contexts, for different purposes and at varying levels of proficiency. The school curriculum should aim at…

The present study examines the possible effects of bilinguality on third language learning among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners with a focus on reading comprehension proficiency achievement. This study is a longitudinal survey of EFL learners in Urmia University in Azerbaijan, Iran, during 2002-2004. It compared 56 Turkish-Persian…

With a Finnish-speaking majority and a Swedish-speaking minority, Finland offers a striking contrast in the kinds of cross-linguistic influence that can occur in the acquisition of English in a multilingual setting. While much previous research has looked at the differences between Finnish and Swedish influences, our study compares Swedish…