Global research on the historical conditions of the formation of multilingual societies

多语言社会最具生产力的定义是“功能性多语言社会”。只要存在两种或两种以上的语言，我们就会发现语言之间存在功能歧视。本研究的目的是历史地验证这种多语功能和“功能平等的多语社会”的形成。这是最后一年的研究，所以我们试图在全球范围内进行分析，以起草一份最终报告。我们6月在东京开了一个研究会议，8月在三重县刀市开了一个为期3天的研究研讨会。12月初，我们在一桥大学举行了一次公开的研究会议，以便进行全球比较。近十年来，在欧盟，特别是在威尔士和加泰罗尼亚等少数民族语言地区，功能平等的多语言社会理论和实践正在发展。在非洲或南亚，也有许多国家对少数民族语言的法律保护正在取得进展。但不能说这些地区的少数民族真的受到法律的保护。在日本，虽然我们看到冲绳和阿伊努人的语言和文化的承认取得了一些进展，并将这些文化与日本的朝鲜族文化和日本-巴西文化进行了比较，但法律保护仍然落后。此外，在全球范围内对多语言社会的整体理论进行比较仍然是一个未来的项目。

The most productive definition of multilingual societies is the "functionally multilingual societies". We find functional discrimination between languages wherever exist two or more languages. The purpose of this research is to verify historically such multilingual functions and the formation of "functionally equal multilingual societies".This was the final research year so we tried to analyze globally to draw up a final report. We made a study conference in June in Tokyo, a 3 day research seminar in August in Toba-shi, Mie Prefecture. We hold an open research conference in Hitotsubashi University, at the beginning of December, in order to make global comparison.The theory and the practice of functionally equal multilingual societies are developing in EU, especially, in minority language areas, such as Wales and Catalonia, in this decade. In Africa or in South Asia, there are also many countries where legal protections of minority languages are progressing. But it cannot be said that minority groups in these areas are really protected by laws. In Japan, although we can see some progress about the recognition of the language and the culture of Okinawa and of Ainu, and the comparison of these cultures and those of the Korean people in Japan, and of the Japanese-Brazil, the legal protection still lags behind. Moreover, comparison on the global scale of overall theory about multilingual societies remains as a future project.