32.1039, Disc: Measuring Relatedness among Languages

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-1039. Mon Mar 22 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.1039, Disc: Measuring Relatedness among Languages

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Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 04:10:50
From: Karen Pennesi [pennesi at uwo.ca]
Subject: Measuring Relatedness among Languages

 
I received an inquiry from a colleague in psychiatry who works with
immigrants. He is asking if there is a way to measure the "distance" between
languages in order to generate hypotheses about cognitive effort required to
learn L2 when L1 is very different (i.e. from a different language family).
Can anyone recommend literature on L2 acquisition that compares the
grammatical, phonological etc. features of L1 and L2  to inform this potential
argument that the more different two languages are, the more difficulty
learners face?

Thank you for any leads. I will pass them on.



Linguistic Field(s): Genetic Classification
                     Historical Linguistics
                     Language Acquisition
                     Typology



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