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MIC Related Research | Dr. Mark Aronoff

 

I grew up in a complex multilingual community and I took for granted that it was normal for many languages to coexist in complicated ways in a single place. Within the few square blocks of my neighborhood, there were more than a dozen languages in daily use.  Some people switched effortlessly among two or three languages, while others spoke only the language that they had brought with them from far away and were unable to converse in either one of the two languages of public discourse.  I understood from a very young age that each language that I know has its own peculiar place: languages of religion, languages of scholarship, and languages of different media of expression: spoken, signed, and written.  What makes humans special is not just that we have language but that we have languages, thousands of them, each with its own special importance.  I have devoted my academic life to trying to understand this truth.