Mikael Parkvall

Does multilingualism affect the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease?: A worldwide analysis by country

It has been suggested that the cognitive requirements associated with bi- and multilingual processing provide a form of mental exercise that, through increases in cognitive reserve and brain fitness, may delay the symptoms of cognitive failure associated with Alzheimer′s disease and other forms of dementia. We collected data on a country-by-country basis that might shed light on this suggestion. Using the best available evidence we could find, the somewhat mixed results we obtained provide tentative support for the protective benefits of multilingualism against cognitive decline. But more importantly, this study exposes a critical issue, which is the need for more comprehensive and more appropriate data on the subject.

Modeling the Evolution of Creoles

Various theories have been proposed regarding the origin of creole languages. Describing a process where only the end result is documented involves several methodological difficulties. In this pape ...

Simulating the genesis of Mauritian

This paper presents a computer simulation of the genesis of Mauritian Creole. The input consists of detailed demographic data and typological information on Mauritian as well as the languages which contributed to its birth. The simulation is deliberately a simplistic one – the idea is to have as few potentially controversial assumptions as possible built into the model, and add additional parameters only to the extent that its output differs from the real-world result. As it turns out, the model generates a language which is highly similar to Mauritian as it is spoken today, and thus, very little “tweaking” seems necessary. Most notably, the model produces the desired result without the postulation of targeted language acquisition, and while one cannot conclude that this was not a part of the creolisation process, our simulation suggests that it is not a necessary assumption.

Access, prestige and losses in contact languages

I am generally positive about Muyskens (M) approach, and the potential use of unifying various seemingly related phenomena is obvious. The approach could also serve as a tool in determining to what extent these phenomena actually are sides of the same coin (I am somewhat less convinced of this than most contact linguists).