Individual Bi- and Multilingualism

• Multiplicity of repertoires and the problem of quanitification of data that may not be quantifiable.

• Difficulty of measurement. Are we measuring quantity of skills or quality of skills? Tendency to focus only on the quantifiable.

• reliance on self-assessment of proficiency. Censuses ask people to declare their proficiency; these declarations are reported.

• Written language vs. spoken proficiency. S. Asian linguistic culture values only skill in written language, not spoken.

Societal bi- and multilingualism

• Census Data: we have good census data compared to some countries of the world; but reliability of data?

• Nomenclature problems: named varieties

• Written lgs. vs. spoken lgs.

• "official" vs. unofficial lgs./dialects

• lg . declaration as declaration of ethnicity rather than of actual linguistic behavior or proficiency. Thus lg. declaration can fluctuate wildly, e.g. for Urdu, Panjabi, Hindi (the "HUP" area, cf. Khubchandani); less so for other lgs.
  1. Early studies by Hodson (1931): tried to elaborate 5 kinds of bilingualism, tho problematical.

  2. Weinreich: studied (1957) the 1951 Census; wanted to know why some lgs. have many bilinguals and others don't. Bilingualism is roughly proportional to the size of the group; the more speakers it has, the more likely others are to learn it. Small groups that are monolingual are problematic for this finding (e.g. the Todas in the Nilgiris). Interested in the "functional load" of a language.

  3. Breton's Atlas of languages and ethnicities. Relied on census data, taking it at face value.

  4. Mackey: interested in the variation in bilingual behavior, esp. in speech; more variation than in monolinguals.

  5. Stewart's typology and codes: statuses and functions of multilingualism; how it evolved, how things evaluated.

  It appears that South Asia favors multilingualism, more than just tolerates it; solidarity (caste? marriage relations?) tends to enhance and strengthen linguistic diversity, and there is no expectation that anyone will abandon a language for another. Note the existence in the Nilgiris of 3 mut. unintell. lgs. (Toda, Kota, Badaga) which have been spoken in close proximity for centuries, with maintenance of boundaries and groups, and social differences.

  Others (Emeneau etc.) discuss the

  1. degree of bilingualism

  2. the context of bilingualism. This might also focus on the domains dominated by each language; how patterns of community or family multilingualism is supported;

  3. role of extensive bilateral bilingualism in the area, e.g. the Balochi-Brahui complex, where majority of speakers of both lgs. are bilingual in the other lg. This also is the main factor (says Emeneau) in the structural borrowing that is so common.

  4. Emeneau felt the prestige factor, emphasized in other theories of bilingualism, has been exaggerated. In S. Asia, other factors mitigate against it, tho it is important (people imitiate the prestige language, i.e. learn it; people don't learn the non-prestige language.)

  5. Nadkarni studied bilingualism between Karnataka Saraswat Konkani (KSKo) and Kannada; found a need for difference betwen "extensive" and "intensive" bilingualism. Kannada lacks overt prestige for KSKO speakers, (but maybe it has "covert prestige"? hs) but it does have the functional dominance in the area.
     1. Extensive bilingualism: everybody in the community is bilingual.
     2. Intensive bilingualism: 2nd lg. is used intensively in some aspect of daily life, i.e. speaker is not just conversant with the lg.

     Thus Kannada comes to influence KSKO both through intensive and extensive bilingualism, but has nothing to do with "prestige" factor.

Other kinds of bi/multilingualism:

1. Other kinds of behavior: code-switching. Many people use words or phrases from another language in their main language, and sometimes it is hard to tell which language is which.

2. Institutions that function bilingually: The so-called bilingual school? How does this work? How many schools are fully bilingual? How many use one (less prestigious) lg. as an auxiliary lg., the other (prestigeful) lg. as an object of official instruction, with the unofficial lg. used as a language of explanation ?

3. South Asia tends to not support this model; languages have separate domains that tend not to overlap.

4. Diglossia as a factor in bilingualism, esp. in schooling. H-variety may be the language studied, but L-variety may be the lg. used to explain and paraphrase things. This may happen unconsciously (Tamil) or consciously (Nagaland).

5. Problem of Registers existing (or not) for certain subjects: science and techn. may not be developed (Ausbau) for certain lgs., for other registers (e.g. religion) only the indigenous language is appropriate, i.e. has a register.

6. Thus, subjects may be taught in different languages: sciences, technology in English, Humanities, religion, music, art in indigenous language.