Position: Professor of Linguistics (Bilingualism)

Email: m.tamburelli@bangor.ac.uk

Phone: ++44 (0)1248 382078

Location: Room 205b, 37-41 College Road

  • PhD: Linguistics (Bilingualism)
    University College London,
  • BA: Linguistics
    University College London,

PhD supervision

  • Conor Glackin: Intelligibility and communication in stressful social contexts. 2017-2023.
  • Judit Vari: Monitoring language vitality in autochthonous diglossic communities. 2017-2021.
  • Mara Leonardi: Trilingualism and Diglossia among the Germanic-speaking group in South Tyrol (Italy). 2012-2016.
  • Abigail Ruth Price: “Is ‘reversed diglossia’ coming to Wales? Investigating the linguistic habits of adolescents in Wales and beyond.” Fully funded studentship in bilingualism, Bangor University Anniversary Scholarship. 2013-2019.
  • Lissander Brasca: Classification of Romance linguistic varieties. 2013-2023 (P/T).
  • Athanasia Papastergiou: the role of educational settings in bilingual acquisition. ESRC funded PhD. 2014-2016 (co-supervisor).

Teaching at Bangor

I teach courses on introductory linguistics, phonology, and bilingualism (from a social as well as a psycholinguistic perspective). For details, please consult the current timetable or send me a message.

  • QXL1110 - Introduction to Language
  • QXL2201 - Sounds and Sound Systems
  • QXL33/4470 - Language Policy & Planning
  • QXL 1115 Intro to Phonetics and Phonology
  • QXL 4432 Research Methods
  • QXL33/4436 – Phonology in Bilingual Acquisition

My Research focuses on bi- and multi-lingualism, both from a mentalist/representational perspective as well as from a sociolinguistic and comparative perspective.

Within a representational perspective, I have worked on Bilingual First Language Acquisition, particularly in relation to syntactic and phonological transfer effects in simultaneous bilinguals, but also on the acquisition and organisation of lexical properties, the nature of paradigms and of the mechanisms underlying lexical organisation (including the mapping of cross-modular information in the lexicon) and on lexical and phonological development in typically developing children and in children with SLI.

I also work on the more social and comparative aspects of bilingual development, particularly on regional and minority languages (language policy and maintenance), on issues of language diversity (the measurement of linguistic attitudes), and the diglossic/bilingual communities of Italy, but also on measuring phonetic distance in linguistic continua, and on the measurement and application of intelligibility rates as a criterion of demarcation between 'regional languages' and 'regional dialects'.

I am currently director of the International Research Network on Contested Languages and head of the Language Attitudes Research Team.

I welcome enquiries from students interested in pursuing a PhD in the areas of:
 
Linguistic Diversity; Regional, Minority and Contested languages: language attitudes; assessment of language vitality; intelligibility measurements and quantitative comparison of linguistic traits; intelligibility as a criterion of demarcation.
 
Language policy and maintenance, reversing language shift: the measurement of linguistic attitudes, the impact of attitudes on maintenance efforts, the relationship between attitudes, policy and usage in regional/minority/contested/heritage language situations.

Bilingual first language acquisition: crosslinguistic interference in the acquisition of syntactic and phonological structures; bilingual acquisition in diglossic contexts.

2025

2024

2023

2021

2020

2018

2016

2014

2013

  • PublishedGrammar in parsing and acquisition
    Chondrogianni, V. & Tamburelli, M., 1 Jan 2013, In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism. 3, 3, p. 289-295
    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
  • PublishedLesser languages in Modern Europe: the case of Italy
    Tamburelli, M., 2013, Proceedings of the 4th ENIEDA Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education.
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

2012

2010

2008

2007

  • PublishedLexical Acquisition and Simultaneous Bilingualism
    Tamburelli, M., 2007, Two or More Languages: proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Bilingualism, University of Joensuu, Finland. Nikolaev, A. (ed.). Vol. 41.
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

2006

  • PublishedParadigms, Acquisition and Bilingualism
    Tamburelli, M., 2006, Proceedings of the Fourth Cambridge Post-Graduate Conference in Language Research.
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review
  • PublishedRemarks on Richness
    Tamburelli, M., 2006, UCL Working Paper Linguistics, 18.
    Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article

2005

2025

  • PhD Viva Voce

    Internal examiner

    13 May 2025

    Activity: Examination (Examiner)
  • Master's course in Data, methods and models for language sciences

    Guest lecture: Finding Languages: Ausbau-centrism and methods for the measurement of linguistic distance

    8 May 2025

    Activity: Participation in Academic workshop, seminar, course (Invited speaker)
  • More than (a) dialect: a look into the future of Eifeler Platt

    How do you promote the community language maintenance? What does research tell us about the future of Eifeler Platt?

    We combine the latest research findings and audience contributions to take you on a journey through fundamental questions concerning the vitality and maintenance of Eifeler Platt in East Belgium.

    Listen to experts and connect with fellow language and dialect enthusiasts.

    14 Mar 2025

    Links:

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Public lecture/debate/seminar (Advisor)
  • Linguistic and societal factors that affect the bilingual experience: two key dimensions

    invited talk, followed by two days of discussion panels, in which I participated as main discussant and co-discussant.

    6 Mar 2025 – 8 Mar 2025

    Activity: Invited talk (Invited speaker)
  • Hearings for regional bill on cultural heritage (PDL 52) in Lombardy, Italy

    Participation in Regional Government (Lombardy region, Italy) discussions on possible amendments of regional law for cultural heritage (PDL 52, commissione cultura).

    Presentation of research results and of recent outreach activities aimed at fostering the presence of Lombard in public, formal, and institutional spaces.

    28 Jan 2025

    Activity: Types of Business and Community - Membership of public/government advisory/policy group or panel (Contributor)

2024

  • PhD Examination

    External Examiner

    6 Dec 2024

    Activity: Examination (Examiner)
  • Speaking Lombard: some thought on use, recognition, vitality

    sharing recent research findings with stakeholders: local politicians, research participants, members of local institutions (e.g. public library) and general public. Held in Albino, Bergamo, Italy.

    24 Nov 2024

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Public lecture/debate/seminar (Speaker)
  • Beyond Language: a peek into the future of Welsh

    How do you successfully maintain a language? What can research tell us about the future of the Welsh language?

    Combining the latest research and interactive contributions from the audience, Beyond language: a peek into the future of Welsh will take you on a journey through some of the fundamental questions surrounding language vitality and its maintenance.

    This is a free event and a great opportunity to hear from subject experts and network with fellow language enthusiasts.

    13 Nov 2024

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Public lecture/debate/seminar (Chair)
  • Speaking Lombard today: use, recognition and vitality

    sharing recent research findings with the local mayor and community representatives. Held in San Pellegrino, Italy.

    4 Nov 2024

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Work on advisory panels for social community and cultural engagement (Speaker)
  • A study on the health of the Lombard language: recognition, attitudes, vitality

    Presentation of research findings and discussion with 3rd sector organization for the promotion of regional languages of Northern Italy.

    Oct 2024

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Work on advisory panels for social community and cultural engagement (Contributor)
  • The interaction of policy, attitudes, and vitality: evidence from three bilingual communities

    Paper presented at the International Congress of Linguists 2024 in Poznań:

    Active language policy and the fostering or maintenance of positive attitudes are fundamental

    components in the prevention of language shift (e.g. Fishman, 1990). This, together with recent

    methodological developments in sociolinguistics (Kircher & Zipp, 2022) calls for a more holistic approach to the measurement of language attitudes and their relationship with exposure levels. In this paper, we present three large studies investigating the relationship between early exposure, language attitudes, and different bilingual language policies in three European communities where a minority/endangered language co‐exists with a sociolinguistically dominant language.

    The bilingual communities under investigation are Lombard‐Italian in Italy, Moselle Franconian‐German in Belgium, and Welsh‐English in Wales, exemplifying fundamentally different types of language policy as well as systematic variation in both opportunities for and amount of early exposure. The Welsh language receives full socio‐political recognition, and there exist ample opportunities for people to be exposed to Welsh either in the family or broader community. Lombard, on the other hand, is in a situation of benign neglect, not benefitting from any active policy and with rather scarce opportunities for exposure except for those who grow up in a predominantly Lombard‐speaking family. Moselle Franconian is somewhat in between: while not officially recognised, its speakers are considered a German‐speaking minority. Importantly, however, due to a situation of diglossia (Ferguson, 1959), it is

    Moselle‐Franconian – rather than German – that is regularly spoken in daily communication, hence providing ample opportunities for early exposure.

    To investigate the relationship between these different sociolinguistic situations and the effect they may have on speakers’ attitudes, we collected data from 338 participants aged between 24‐36 years, employing three different methodologies that varied in degree of explicitness: the Attitudes towards Languages Questionnaire (Schoel et al., 2012), the Matched Guise Technique (Lambert et al., 1960), and the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al., 1998).

    Data from each method will be investigated in relation to several indicators of early exposure

    collected through a linguistic background questionnaire, as well as to extralinguistic variables – notably gender – while attitude dimensions such as status and solidarity will also be explored.

    Preliminary results suggest potential links between bilingual language policy and speakers’

    attitudes, with possible interactions between types of exposure and some of the attitude scores. This research can provide insight into how different policies may affect language attitudes, and the role of early exposure as potential mediator.

    8 Sep 2024

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • Investigating the relationship between early exposure and explicit and implicit attitudes towards Welsh and English

    This paper explored the relationship between early language exposure and the language attitudes of Welsh-English speakers in north-west Wales.

    Our findings indicate the importance of early language exposure in forming implicit attitudes, which suggests that increased means of exposure, particularly beyond educational contexts, should receive more attention in Welsh language policy and planning, and more generally in minority language situations where a good level of educations use has been established.

    12 Jul 2024

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • Enhancing replicability and reproducibility in the measurement of language attitudes: combining new technology and standardising practice

    Plenary talk at Research Methodologies Conference 2024.

    10 Jul 2024

    Links:

    Activity: Invited talk (Keynote speaker)
  • Measuring and modelling language attitudes: Comparisons across two bilingual communities

    Speakers’ attitudes are considered a fundamental barometer for the vitality of a language (e.g., UNESCO, 2003). This, together with findings that implicit attitudes are generally stronger predictors of habitual and spontaneous behaviour (e.g., Perugini, 2005), raises two core questions: (1) which types

    of attitudes and thus which attitude measurements are better predictors of language usage? (2) to what extent do different language policies feed different types of speakers’ attitudes? We explored these questions by measuring rates of spontaneous language usage and comparing them with attitudinal results from two methods that vary in degrees of implicitness: the Matched Guise Technique (Lambert et al., 1960) and the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz, 1998) across two bilingual communities whose regional/minority languages receive radically different degrees of sociopolitical recognition: Lombard–Italian (Italy) and Welsh–English (UK). Results from 163 participants

    aged between 24–36 years show that usage rates correlate with MGT status scores for Lombard but not for Welsh. The reverse holds for IAT scores, correlating with usage rates for Welsh but not Lombard.

    We propose that these findings can be understood in view of the different socio-political support associated with the two languages: while strong support for Welsh led to its use becoming habitual and thus able to be captured by implicit attitude measurements, the use of Lombard has been discouraged for decades, and therefore younger speakers who choose to use it are making a more deliberate, conscious decision, resulting in behaviour that corelates with the less implicit measurements of the MGT. These results have important implications for the study of language attitudes, particularly for the measurement of attitudes as a proxy for language vitality. Specifically, they suggest that the degree to which an attitudinal measurement can predict linguistic behaviour depends partly on the social and political circumstances of the language at issue.

    12 Jun 2024 – 16 Jun 2024

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • Language contestation: dimensions, properties and future directions

    Oral presentation

    25 May 2024

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • Invited member of experts panel

    23 May 2024

    Activity: Consultancy (Advisor)
  • PhD examination

    External Examiner

    21 May 2024

    Activity: Examination (Examiner)
  • Fariba Rigi

    Project on Language Attitudes towards Balochi and Persian in Iran

    21 Feb 2024 →

    Activity: Hosting an academic visitor (Host)
  • Attitude asymmetry in bilingual communities reflects differences in socio-political recognition between majority and minority/endangered languages: Evidence from three European communities.

    Paper presented at VALS-ASLA 2024:

    Asymmetries and inequalities between major languages and regional/minority/endangered languages are often reflected in – as well as a consequence of – language policy and the linguistic attitudes held by speakers of those languages (e.g., Fishman, 1991; Trudgill, 1992; UNESCO, 2003). In this paper, we present two large studies investigating the relationship between language attitudes and different levels of socio-political recognition in three European communities where a minority/endangered language co-exists in an asymmetric relationship with a sociolinguistically dominant language.

    The communities under investigation are Lombard-Italian speakers in Italy, Moselle Franconian-German speakers in Belgium, and Welsh-English speakers in Wales. These communities are markedly different in terms of their language policies and the degrees of socio-political recognition of their minority/endangered language. In Wales, the Welsh language enjoys full socio-political recognition and strong public support (e.g. Baker, 2003); in the Eifel region of Belgium, while Moselle Franconian does not enjoy direct recognition, its speakers are a recognised linguistic minority, albeit it as German speaking, with Moselle-Franconian indirectly supported as a closely-related variety of German (Möller, 2017); meanwhile, despite a mention in a regional law, Lombard does not feature among the languages that the Italian government deems worthy of protection, and as such does not benefit from any active policy (Coluzzi, 2007; Coluzzi et al., 2018).

    To investigate the potential inequalities that emerge from the different socio-political situations across the three bilingual communities, we collected data from a total of 235 participants aged between 24-36 years employing two different methodologies. This resulted in the collection of attitudinal measurements that varied in degree of explicitness: the Attitudes Towards Language Questionnaire (AToL, Schoel et al., 2013) measured explicit/overt language attitudes, while an adaptation of the Matched Guise Technique (MGT, Lambert, Gardner and Fillenbaum, 1960) measured less overt and more indirect attitudes towards the communities’ languages via the speaker-evaluation paradigm.

    Results from the AToL suggest a link between degree of socio-political recognition and overall overt attitude, with Welsh scoring higher than both Moselle Franconian and Lombard, and Moselle-Franconian scoring higher than Lombard.

    The link between degree of socio-political recognition and attitudes is further supported by the MGT results, where an interaction between community and attitude score suggests that the attitudes held towards each language type (i.e., majority language vs minority language) depend on the community, with Wales and Belgium scoring the minority/endangered language more positively than the majority language, while Lombardy shows the opposite trend.

    Analyses of the solidarity and status components of the MGT show that consistent language policy (e.g., in Wales) is strongly reflected in speakers’ attitudes, while the type of “benign neglect” (e.g., Fishman, 2004: 115) we see in Lombardy tends to continually encourage negative attitudes towards the endangered language, perpetuating asymmetries and possibly accelerating endangerment.

    12 Feb 2024 – 13 Feb 2024

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • Alla Ricerca della Verità sulla Lingua Siciliana

    Public seminar (online) on issues of language planning for the Sicilian language.

    30 Jan 2024

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Public lecture/debate/seminar (Contributor)

2023

  • Pushing boundaries in the measurement of language attitudes: Combining new technology and standardising practice

    Paper presented at Linguistics Beyond and Within 2023:

    Speakers’ attitudes are considered a fundamental barometer for the current and future vitality of a language, with recent work emphasising the importance of methodological developments (Kircher & Zipp, 2022). This, together with the growing concern surrounding the replicability of results across the social sciences, including in linguistics (Grieve, 2021), calls for urgent developments in research practices, including the adoption of more consistent and comparable implementations of method. In this paper, we present a series of studies conducted using a newly developed digital application for the collection, storage and transfer of data for research in multilingualism and language attitudes, specifically designed for research in bilingual populations who speak a majority language and a regional/minority/heritage language. This application offers the fundamental benefit of enhancing consistency and comparability within and across studies, which also improves reproducibility, for example by ensuring that presentation of stimuli for a speaker evaluation paradigm (Lambert et al., 1960) is more strictly controlled both across participants and across studies. As the source code is publicly available and version-controlled, other researchers can easily view and reconstruct tasks exactly as they were administered. The application was recently employed across three European communities whose regional/minority languages receive radically different degrees of socio-political recognition: Lombard (Italy), Moselle Franconian (Belgium), and Welsh (UK).Our results reveal fundamental differences in attitude scores depending on measurement type (questionnaire vs. speaker evaluation paradigm). Besides reinforcing the view that different measurements are likely to tap on different attitudinal constructs (e.g., Pantos, 2019), these results also suggest that different measurement methods may gather data on different attitude objects. We argue that this highlights a need for a more holistic approach to the measurement of language attitudes, where a battery of tests – as opposed to a single measure – should become the norm, as it has done in other research areas.

    13 Oct 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • A matter of strength: Language policy, attitudes, and linguistic dominance in three bilingual communities

    Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on Multilingualism and Multilingual Education

    12 Oct 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • New developments in documenting attitudes in minority and heritage language situations: an Italian case-study

    Paper presented at Documenting languages, Documenting Cultures 2023. The conference focuses on the topic of language documentation from the various perspectives offered by different ‘minority’ situations (migrant languages, minority languages, dialects). Its aim is to provide an interdisciplinary look at a topic which is today the focus of renewed interest, both in epistemological and theoretical terms.

    6 Oct 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • New avenues in collecting attitudinal data on regional/minority languages: the case of Welsh

    Paper presented at the Welsh Linguistics Seminar

    27 Jun 2023

    Activity: Invited talk (Speaker)
  • Contested Languages in the Old World

    Member of Scientific Committee

    Mar 2023 – 25 May 2024

    Links:

    Activity: Participation in Academic conference (Member of programme committee)

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

Selected presentations and invited talks

  • (2022) Tamburelli, M. “Attitudes reversed: how Ausbau-centric approaches hinder the maintenance of linguistic diversity”. Keynote talk at LABiC 2022: International conference on bilingualism with local languages, Language Attitudes and Bi(dia)lectal Competence, University of Venice, Italy.
  • (2022) Tamburelli, M. “Language Contestation as a Route to Endangerment”. Talk invited by the Laz Institute and delivered at the Endangered Languages Colloquium, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey.
  • (2021) Tamburelli, M. “Myth busters: Online platforms and emerging ideological shift among Lombard speakers.” Plenary talk at the conference New Contexts for the Use of Minoritized Languages, University of Zadar, Croatia.
  • (2020) Tamburelli, M. “Regional Language Maintenance and the Importance of Digital Domains.” Invited talk at the conference Minority Languages in the Digital Age, The Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Study, University of Greifswald, Germany.
  • (2019) Tamburelli, M. “Bilingual advantage and home language use: the case of minority languages” Invited talk at the 2019 Multilingual Learning Conference, European Council of International Schools (ECIS), London, UK.
  • (2019) Tamburelli, M. “Bilingualism and local communities.” Invited talk at CILVE2 (Second International Conference on the Venetan Language), Vicenza, Italy.
  • (2018) Tamburelli, M. and Tosco, M. “Contested Languages FAQs”. Oral presentation at the 3rd International Conference on Contested Languages in the Old World (CLOW-3), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
  • Tamburelli, M. (2017) “Finding languages: from an old problem to a modern challenge.” Plenary address at UPCEL Language in Society, 20-22 September 2017, University of Madrid, Spain.
  • Tamburelli, M. (2017) ‘The hidden multilingualism of Italy: issues and challenges’ Invited talk at ‘Endangered and Minority Languages of Italy’, Cambridge Group for Endangered Languages and Cultures (CELC), University of Cambridge, UK (January 2017).
  • Tamburelli, M. (2017) “Issues in Romance classification: the case of Gallo-Italic” Invited talk at the Cambridge Romance Linguistics Seminars, University of Cambridge, UK (January 2017).