The study of language and cognition is essential to understanding human behaviors. In particular, cognitive plasticity may shape language learning and other areas critical to the use of languages. Language contact is the social and linguistic phenomena that occur when speakers of different languages (or different dialects of the same language) communicate, resulting in the transfer of linguistic features. The study of language contact examines the processes and results of interaction between speakers of multiple languages. Accordingly, language interaction manifests itself in numerous fields, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience in linguistics, language processing and production, language acquisition, conversation and discourse, social roles of language and linguistic policy, typology, and language change, among others. In addition, it deals with the entire breadth of linguistic research, from discourse to lexicon to grammar, as well as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Despite its vast range of applications and relatively long development, cognition and language contact as a distinct field of research is relatively recent, having just come into its own in the late 20th century. Publications on cognition and language contact might concentrate on the individual-synchronic or structural-diachronic aspects of bilingualism or contact-induced language change. The Research Topic has two major objectives: to investigate cognition and language contact from various perspectives, such as language typology, multilingualism, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and translation studies; and to analyze universal constraints on language contact in various aspects including performance, behaviors, mental processes, and neurophysiological manifestations in the brain.
Potential contributions might employ an array of theoretical and methodological constructs. We welcome contributions that draw on quantitative approaches, more profound qualitative observations, mixed-methods approaches to explore richer meanings of the quantitative data, or other empirical studies using behavioral, psychological, and neuroscientific methods. This Research Topic invites Original Research articles but is also open to General Commentaries, Opinions, and Review articles that advance and broaden the scope of understanding and investigation of language contact.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Empirical investigations in processes and results of language contact
• Neurophysiological changes in the brain under language interaction
• Bilingual advantage in language comprehension and production
• Bilingual language acquisition
• Corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches in multilingual corpora
• Models and methods in contrastive linguistics
• Translation and interpreting studies
• Specific features of translation/ interpreting seen through parallel/comparable corpora
• Media discourse
• Power and ideology in institutional discourse
• Language and the law/ medicine/ science
• Language teaching and learning
• Cross-linguistic influence in language processing and production
The study of language and cognition is essential to understanding human behaviors. In particular, cognitive plasticity may shape language learning and other areas critical to the use of languages. Language contact is the social and linguistic phenomena that occur when speakers of different languages (or different dialects of the same language) communicate, resulting in the transfer of linguistic features. The study of language contact examines the processes and results of interaction between speakers of multiple languages. Accordingly, language interaction manifests itself in numerous fields, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience in linguistics, language processing and production, language acquisition, conversation and discourse, social roles of language and linguistic policy, typology, and language change, among others. In addition, it deals with the entire breadth of linguistic research, from discourse to lexicon to grammar, as well as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Despite its vast range of applications and relatively long development, cognition and language contact as a distinct field of research is relatively recent, having just come into its own in the late 20th century. Publications on cognition and language contact might concentrate on the individual-synchronic or structural-diachronic aspects of bilingualism or contact-induced language change. The Research Topic has two major objectives: to investigate cognition and language contact from various perspectives, such as language typology, multilingualism, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and translation studies; and to analyze universal constraints on language contact in various aspects including performance, behaviors, mental processes, and neurophysiological manifestations in the brain.
Potential contributions might employ an array of theoretical and methodological constructs. We welcome contributions that draw on quantitative approaches, more profound qualitative observations, mixed-methods approaches to explore richer meanings of the quantitative data, or other empirical studies using behavioral, psychological, and neuroscientific methods. This Research Topic invites Original Research articles but is also open to General Commentaries, Opinions, and Review articles that advance and broaden the scope of understanding and investigation of language contact.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Empirical investigations in processes and results of language contact
• Neurophysiological changes in the brain under language interaction
• Bilingual advantage in language comprehension and production
• Bilingual language acquisition
• Corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches in multilingual corpora
• Models and methods in contrastive linguistics
• Translation and interpreting studies
• Specific features of translation/ interpreting seen through parallel/comparable corpora
• Media discourse
• Power and ideology in institutional discourse
• Language and the law/ medicine/ science
• Language teaching and learning
• Cross-linguistic influence in language processing and production
