MODELLING THE SIMULTANEOUS LEARNING OF
SEVERAL RELATED OR ADJOINING LANGUAGES
FROM THE EuRom4 APPROACH
Thanks
It is my pleasure to give special thanks to Mrs Eveline Caduc,
Professor of French Literature at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis,
in charge of the European multi-field course Méditerranée
Contemporaine : Culture et Communication (MC3),of the European module
Langues
et Cultures de l’Europe méditerranéenne, and in charge
of the PROG Médiation culturelle et sociétés de
l’Europe méditerranéenne.I am much indebted to Mrs Caduc
for inviting me to take part in the development activities of European
university diplomas since 1998. She is the advocate number 1 in Europe
of the EuRom4 method and she has entrusted me with the responsibility for
the scientific organization of this European meeting, and on her shoulders
rested the heavy administrative and financial organization of this Conference.
I am very grateful to all the lecturers who, although having
full timetables, accepted the invitation of a young Lecturer to take part
in this Scientific Conference and who agreed to propose a written version
of their papers for publication in the Conference proceedings.
I would also like to thank the Socrates programme through
the agency of the PROG Médiation culturelle et sociétés
de l’Europe méditerranéenne,the Délégation
Générale de la Langue Française, as well as the UMR
6039 Bases Corpus Languages of CNRS.
Présentation
The Scientific Conference "European Year of Languages" organized
on 13th December 2001, at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis,
and entitled Modelling the simultaneous teaching of several related
languages from the EuRom4 approach,proposed several papers the objective
of which was to present various works or experiments currently being undertaken
in Europe, which could provide fundamental tracks for the development of
methods for the simultaneous teaching of several related or adjoining languages
from the experiment based on the EuRom4 method. The various experiments
carried out in several places of Europe concerning the simultaneous learning
of several related languages or the practice of multilingualism meet a
desire and a need for a form of linguistic and cultural European mutual
comprehension that the English language, considered by many to be the international
language, does not seem to be in a position to satisfy, at least in these
fields. European diplomas like those developed by the partners of the PROG
Médiation culturelle et sociétés de l’Europe méditerranéennehave
already integrated the EuRom4 method into their curricula and are at present
ready to integrate methods which will adhere to the same philosophy with
respect to families of languages from other major European areas. This
meeting has been a good opportunity to establish new contacts between European
universities, teachers and researchers. It has already borne fruit in bringing
us to take into account the concept of adjoining languages(a concept
which from now on appears in the title of these Proceedings) and in marking
out the general outline which will make it possible to continue developing
methods for the simultaneous learning of several related or adjoining languages
aiming at extensive European mutual comprehension. This meeting promises
future collaborations in teaching as well as in research.
Eveline Caduc (UMR 6039 of CNRS - University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis),
as the person in charge of Méditerranée Contemporaine
: Culture et Communication (MC3),of the European module Langues
et Cultures de l’Europe ranéenne,and coordinator of the PROG
Médiation
culturelle et sociétés de l’Europe méditerranéenne,opened
the Conference by presenting the European modules "Langues et Cultures
de l’Europe méditerranéenne", "Langues et Cultures de l’Europe
centrale et orientale", and "Langues et Cultures de l’Europe du Nord",
as well as the prospects of developing European diplomas-all this with
the view of creating a European Master of "Langues et cultures de l’Europe",
as part of the four-year plan 2004-2007.
Eric Castagne (CIRLEP EA 2071 - University of Rheims Champagne-Ardenne),
Lecturer in Linguistics, member of the EuRom4 programme since 1990, director
of the multi-annual research programme "Inter Compréhension Européenne"
(ICE), and partner of the PROG Médiation culturelle et sociétés
de l’Europe méditerranéenne,delivered a paper entitled
Intercomprehension
and inferences : from the EuRom4 experiment to the ICE projectthe objective
of which was to present the EuRom4 method which consists in simultaneously
teaching the comprehension of several Romance languages based on, not only
the syntactic and lexical "transparencies" which exist between the languages
of the same family, but more especially on the inferences which it is possible
to develop from one’s own knowledge. Eric Castagne also presented the first
encouraging results of an experiment which is currently being carried out
with the same philosophy, but within the context of Germanic languages
(English, German, Dutch) : the ICE project. The application of the EuRom4
approach to another family of languages, carried out with a certain success
for the moment, points the way to promising paths towards the renewal of
the foreign language teaching, with the development of a form of practical
and economical multilingualism in Europe, and to the consolidation of the
European Area.
Dominique Willems (University of Ghent), Professor of Linguistics,
and director of the Contragram programme, gave a paper entitled
Contrastive
semantics and syntax,the objective of which was to present the work
in contrastive linguistics developed within the framework of the Contragram
programme which brings researchers together around the syntactic and semantic
study of the construction of verbs in Dutch, French and English. This research,
although fundamental, proposes immediately exploitable contrastive data
for the ICE project. But it especially confirms the first observations
made in experimenting with ICE according to which there would be more bridges
between French and Dutch than one thought and according to which the comprehension
of Dutch would make it possible for French-speaking people to more easily
grasp other Germanic languages (at least English and German).
Antonio Pamies Bertrán (University of Granada), Professor
of Linguistics, in charge or member of several recent European research
programmes in the fields of language teaching or of translation-interpretation,
particularly connected with Central and Eastern Europe, presented a paper
entitled Semantics and the grammar of possession in the languages of
Europewhich proposes a synthesis of two approaches of the concept of
linguistic possession. From a multilingual corpus which covers a vast sample
of languages of different families, the objective was to account for a
broader variety of possessive constructions, according to a bi-directional
model in which the two mechanisms of projection collaborate. Although bearing
on a very precise subject, this study already gives invaluable indications
on the networks existing between languages of the same family, between
adjoining languages or more distant languages. These networks could be
used as a basis for working out a general strategy of the development of
methods aiming at European mutual comprehension. Ulla Börestam (University
of Uppsala), Professor of Linguistics, proposed a paper entitled Interscandinavian
comprehension and Scandinavian language community : real or ideal
?the objective of which was to present the situation and the experiments
in multilingual comprehension in the Scandinavian countries, and throughout
the Scandinavian area, since the official institutions regard it as a community
of languages. This contribution, which presents the experiments undertaken
in this particular area of Europe on multilingual written or oral comprehension,
provides a great deal of information on the situations where one could
encourage this type of exchange and, as shown by the preceding paper, on
the networks which seem to appear according to the situation and the language,
and which could be used as a basis for a strategy to integrate Scandinavian
languages into a programme like ICE.
Claire Blanche-Benveniste (EPHE & University of Provence),
Director of Research at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris,
Emeritus Professor of the University of Provence, and in charge of the
EuRom4 programme from 1990 to 1997, did us the honour of concluding these
proceedings by presenting a paper entitled Multilingual comprehension
and knowledge of one’s own language.From the observations collected
within the framework of the EuRom4 experiment, the objective was to illustrate
some effective tools which are provided by the contrastive grammar of Romance
languages and the considered extension of the reflection on Romance language
teaching to the teaching of the maternal language. The consequences and
the prospects for modelling the simultaneous and contrastive learning of
several related or adjoining languages was also taken into account.
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