Waves of intensity in language learning: Polyglot Alan Bigulov’s project “10 Languages in 1000 days”

This paper is a review of academic conferences on polyglottery that took place in spring 2022, namely a paper at the conference “Integrative and Cross-Cultural Approaches to the Study of Thinking and Language”, the 2nd International Seminar on Linguistics & Polyglot Studies, and the round table “Research on Polyglottery: Theoretical Analysis and Practice” as part of the 20th International Symposium on Psycholinguistics and Communication Theory. Discussed are polyglots’ cognitive skills, self-monitoring instruments and learning strategies, the hyperintensive method, cognitive metaphors, social perception of polyglottery, common principles behind language processing by brain and by machine, and other issues.

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Polyglot studies in spring 2022

Kazakov

2022

Polyglot agenda over the years: data of round table discussions since 2013

Kulakov

2022

This paper is a review of organised discussions on polyglottery from 2013 to 2022. The starting point of the present study is the round table “Polyglottery and Education” that took place during the International Conference on Multilingual Proficiency: Language, Polyglossia and Polyglottery (New York, 2013). This event is notable for being the first academic discussion of polyglot issues, which brought together both established linguists and renowned polyglots. It also pre-signified the beginning of the modern period for polyglottery as a movement and a science, the latter being marked by the emergence of regular research publications on the subject. The main topics of the 2013 discussion are used as a reference point to compare with the agenda of subsequent polyglot round tables. The data for comparison is drawn from panel discussions held as part of the Polyglot Gatherings and Polyglot Conferences, on the one hand, and at academic symposiums, on the other, thus embracing both the first and third person perspectives (polyglots as the subject vs. the object of study). Presentation of data from the said events is followed by a conclusion about the dynamics of polyglot discussions over the years. The study shows that polyglottery has become a more frequent subject in scientific discourse. It also demonstrates that the topics addressed at the initial 2013 New York round table (such as defining a polyglot, efficient methods of language-learning, etc.) found their way into subsequent forums and are still relevant among polyglots today. At the same time, new issues have been added to the agenda (using internet platforms to learn languages, studying multiple languages simultaneously, raising multilingual children, etc.). This may reflect the stable and the changeable elements in the structure of interests in the polyglot community.

Assessing successive learning acceleration in Germanic languages: a research paradigm proposal

Aleshkevich-Suslov

2022

The phenomenon of successive language learning acceleration, frequently experienced by polyglots, when in order to learn a new language from a familiar language group the polyglot requires less time with each new language, is widely known, but, it seems, it has never been thoroughly examined. This article presents a simple mathematical model based on the author’s own data, which has been collected over the course of three years’ worth of independent language study and describes how much faster one learns languages from the same group. The number of hours spent on a new language as a function of the number of previously known languages is described by a simple exponential function with two parameters: the “starting time” and the “half-life”. According to the author’s hypotheses, these parameters may provide a numerical measure of certain aspects of language that are difficult to quantify otherwise. The “starting time” could be a measure of propinquity between the learner and the language group, whereas the “halflife” could be a measure of propinquity between the languages of a given group. Additionally, reviewed are three different approaches to keeping track of time spent on language activity as used by different polyglots. These approaches are of importance for collecting data to be used in studies of successive language learning acceleration. At the end of the article, an idealized algorithm for conducting such a study is presented, and particular attention is drawn to the various parameters that must be controlled in order to carry out this kind of research in an appropriate manner. This particular study did not manage to satisfy all of the criteria mentioned, so the reliability of the claims made in this article is debatable, and additional validation is required. Furthermore, the validity of the model has to be confirmed by other researchers and polyglots.