UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL

Instituto de Letras – Curso de Graduação em Letras

Departamento de Línguas Modernas – Setor de Língua Inglesa
Prof Dr. Felipe F. Kupske

Alexandre Rodrigues

Abstract: multilingualism can benefit the phonology of the speaker. When learning another language, like english,
some sounds are unlocked. Nowadays, communities live at the prime of technology, with so many tools to
communicate thoughts and share them to other people that live in any place of the world. So, multilingualism is at
the peak moment and can increase our potential to learn new forms of speech, of listening and of culture.

Language creates diversity: or diversity creates language?

  The English language as lingua franca can be easily defined as a language that successfully
spread around the world through their culture(colonization, weapon market, war participation,
war finance, movies). I had to write this detail about english, because in the history of the world,
a lot of nations who was called as “colonizers” tried to expand their territories and their mores.
Language, mores and culture have so much in common, these words are like relatives. In
addition, nowadays, a lot of english words are recognized in many countries, not only that but
also a lot of countries use english as an official second language. When things like that appears
in our environment(Tv, social media, books, classroom), changing the way we think(like adding
more vocabulary to the speaker) and modifying the perception about the function of the
language, making people understand every language developed a basic structure pattern in our
daily life, so of course things like that will turn into an object of study. 

 About syntatic complexity, what differ between nonnative and monolinguals probably is with
some fragments of the language. Nonnatives learn English after the first language is acquired(I
am using myself as an example), so my system already have symbols that are fixed in my "field
of the words/Lexic box" it is like a memory card, every time I want to talk or write, I need to
access it, and then I am able to create sentences/phrases/clauses and also still create new words
with these codes/signs. Since I am a Nonnative, I use like a  Portuglish, I write English sentences
with my Portuguese notion.  I can easily change portuguese signs to English, but it is useless,
because I live where the creation of words in my first language has more impact and variety. Of
course, there are english words/expressions that even the context I couldn't know and anticipate
what it is and means, but it is only because I don't have this relation with the memory that I have
now, with the English signs that already exist. If I don’t read often, talk, listen or write in english,
it is kind difficult to keep a proficiency. Obviously, proficiency is a factor that influence ELF
community. So, that is my first hypothesis based in what I read in the two text, and what I did
perceive until today about linguistics aspects(hope not be totally wrong lol). To summarize, I
tend to use English sentence with Portuguese thoughts.   Another hypothesis is that monolingual
can have difficulties to understand new vocabularies. Language is alive and always changing
itself, every group of people will developed a form of speech in any language. Of course,
nowadays, it is easier to approximate addition language to monolinguals than before. I totally
agree with the article when it says ELF authors use long senteces to explain their thoughts. The
fact is ELF authors need to be more technical explaining their thoughts, and that is by the fact
that ELF authors often have more contact with English standard language than oral language. For
example, the English community at Letras UFRGS, in general, speak less period of time in
English than listening/writing/reading it, so the tendency at English Letras UFRGS community,
the linguistics repertoire is more concentrate in reading and writing skills, including listen
abilities.

In the end, what differs english nonnnatives from monolinguals is the syntatic use of
recursiveness.

References:

HÜLMBAUER_et_al_2008

WU_et_al_2019

Appel, R, and P. Muysken. 1987. Language contact and bilingualism. London: Edward Arnold.