Multilingual psychotypology
The point of view of speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (L1), English (L2) and German (L3) regarding the similarities and differences between the languages in their linguistic repertoire
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47456/rctl.v19i42.48312Keywords:
Psychotypology, Multilingualism, First language, Foreign languagesAbstract
This study aimed to investigate the perception of multilinguals, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as their first language and English (ING) and German (ALE) as foreign languages, regarding the similarities and differences between these languages (Vildomec, 1963; Kellerman, 1983). Based on the theoretical propositions of Hall et al. (2009), Lindqvist (2015) and Sánchez and Bardel (2016), a Psychotypological Perception Scale (PPS) was developed, structured so that participants would assign numerical values to determine how close or distant the PB-ALE, PB-ING and ING-ALE pairings were, considering the orthographic, phonetic-phonological and grammatical domains. The statistical analysis of the data revealed that the psychotypological perception of the participants is in line with the linguistic typology (Katzner, 2002). In all the questions analyzed, the participants judged the ING-ALE pair to be the most similar, while the PB-ALE pair was the most distinct. These results are in line with the theoretical framework used in the research (Stedje, 1976; Schmidt; Frota, 1986; Singleton, 1987; De Angelis; Selinker, 2001; Leticia; Mardesic, 2007; Sánchez; Bardel, 2014, Lindqvist, 2015; Nelson et al., 2021), corroborating the understanding that the higher the speakers' level of proficiency, the closer their psychotypological perception of linguistic typology will be.
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