Workshops on Linguistic Convergence and Language Processing

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The study of language draws from a wide range of disciplines, and its interdisciplinary nature is particularly strong in the study of bilingualism. With funding from the National Science Foundation, two workshops to be held at The Pennsylvania State University, each devoted bilingualism in the context of English and a variety of Hispanic languages. The Workshop on Linguistic Convergence will focus on how bilingual speakers, regardless of fluency, show subtle differences from monolingual speakers in terms of their language performance. These differences provide important evidence on how two languages are managed, and possibly merged, in the mind of a bilingual. The Workshop on Language Processing will focus on the moment-by-moment processing of language in the mind of a bilingual, with particular attention to issues surrounding the acquisition of two languages, and the consequences of neurological language disorders for bilinguals. These workshops will bring together experts from a range of disciplines, including linguistics, speech science, psychology and neuropsychology, to discuss a misconception of bilingualism that places Hispanic youth at a disadvantage in our educational and testing systems. The misconception is that, while bilingual language development may be different from monolingual development, it is by no means deviant or deficient. The research to be discussed at these workshops is aimed at, among other things, dispelling this misconception.