Children and adults speakers of a minority language: a study on Sardinian/Italian speakers
RESEARCH IN MORE DETAIL
Speaking a regional language such as Sardinian, is not always perceived as a valuable skill. In this project we investigated in both adult and children linguistics and cognitive profiles of Sardinian/Italian bilingual speakers.
Is the Italian language of a speaker fluent in Sardinian different from a monolingual Italian speaker? Do we see any cognitive advantage in a bilingual speaker of a regional language?
We worked in an area of Sardinia where the majority of speakers are bilingual Sardinian/Italian measuring language profiles and cognitive skills. Our finding supported the benefit of speaking a minority language for our brain and falsified the misconception that speaking a minority language will affect the competence in the other language.
Collaborators
Manuela Mereu
Manuela is a fluent speaker and writer of Sardinian. She has a genuine interest in promoting the language and acted as a first point of contact for the research.
Mateo Obregon
Mateo is a Psycholinguist with an interest in methodologies and analyses for language data. He was responsible in modelling the linguistic profiles and producing the data reports.
Prof Antonella Sorace
Antonella is Professor of Developmental Linguistics at The University of Edinburgh.
Her research brings together linguistics, experimental psychology and cognitive science. She is the Director of Bilingualism Matters.
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