Language Acquisition & Multilingualism
Language Acquisition & Multilingualism (LA&M) was a linguistic research programme developed and supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, Humanities Department). The central aim of the programme was to instigate research on the intersection of the fields of language acquisition and multilingualism. The innovative power of the programme was founded in the integrated approach that combined three major aspects of the study of language acquisition and multilingualism: the role of architecture, processing and context in a multilingual setting.
Research on LA&M provides new knowledge, both about language in general and, more specifically, about the structure and process of first and second language acquisition in a variety of contexts. The research approach advocated here considers language as a specific form of human cognition that develops under the influence of contextual factors. The new theoretical insights that result from such an approach are leading to knowledge that can be used in dealing with social issues surrounding LA&M.
The research programme has funded four national research projects selected by an international panel of experts and in 2007 three international postdoc projects started. In each of the international projects two postdocs were working on a related question in the area of language acquisition and multilingualism: one postdoc in the Netherlands and one postdoc from either the UK or Germany.