Additional Contact Information
Position: Research Officer in Linguistics (German)
Email: f.breit@bangor.ac.uk
Phone:
尝辞肠补迟颈辞苍:听37-41 College Road
Qualifications
- PhD: Linguistics
University College London, 2019 - MA: Linguistics with specialisation in Phonology
University College London, 2014 - BA: Linguistics
2012
Publications
2024
- E-pub ahead of print
Brasca, L., Tamburelli, M., Gruffydd, I. & Breit, F., 10 Nov 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.
Research output: Contribution to journal 鈥� Article 鈥� peer-review - E-pub ahead of print
Gruffydd, I., Tamburelli, M., Breit, F. & Bagheri, H., Jan 2025, In: Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 44, 1, p. 79-106 28 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal 鈥� Article 鈥� peer-review - Accepted/In press
Breit, F., Tamburelli, M., Gruffydd, I. & Brasca, L., 22 Nov 2024, (Accepted/In press) In: Linguistics Beyond and Within. 10
Research output: Contribution to journal 鈥� Article 鈥� peer-review
2023
- Published
Breit, F. (Editor), Yoshida, Y. (Editor) & Youngberg, C. (Editor), Aug 2023, London: UCL Press.
Research output: Book/Report 鈥� Book 鈥� peer-review - Published
Breit, F. (Developer), Tamburelli, M. (Developer) & Gruffydd, I. (Other), 3 May 2023
Research output: Non-textual form 鈥� Software - Published
Breit, F., 14 Aug 2023, Elements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology. Breit, F., Yoshida, Y. & Youngberg, C. (eds.). UCL Press
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding 鈥� Chapter 鈥� peer-review - Published
Breit, F. (Editor), Botma, B. (Editor), van 't Veer, M. (Editor) & van Oostendorp, M. (Editor), 9 Jun 2023, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 400 p. (Oxford Studies in Phonology and Phonetics)
Research output: Book/Report 鈥� Book 鈥� peer-review - Published
Youngberg, C., Yoshida, Y. & Breit, F., 14 Aug 2023, Elements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology. Breit, F., Yoshida, Y. & Youngberg, C. (eds.). UCL Press
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding 鈥� Chapter 鈥� peer-review - Published
Youngberg, C. & Breit, F., 14 Aug 2023, Elements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology. Breit, F., Yoshida, Y. & Youngberg, C. (eds.). London: UCL Press
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding 鈥� Chapter 鈥� peer-review - Published
Breit, F., 14 Aug 2023, Elements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology. Breit, F., Yoshida, Y. & Youngberg, C. (eds.). London: UCL Press
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding 鈥� Chapter 鈥� peer-review - Unpublished
Breit, F., Tamburelli, M., Gruffydd, I. & Brasca, L., 4 May 2023, (Unpublished).
Research output: Working paper - Published
van 't Veer, M., Botma, B., Breit, F. & van Oostendorp, M., 9 Jun 2023, Primitives of Phonological Structure. Breit, F., Botma, B., van 't Veer, M. & van Oostendorp, M. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 1-36 (Oxford Studies in Phonology and Phonetics).
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding 鈥� Chapter 鈥� peer-review
2020
- Published
Breit, F., 2020, In: Radical: A Journal of Phonology. 1, p. 229-239
Research output: Contribution to journal 鈥� Comment/debate
2017
- Published
Breit, F., 29 Sept 2017, In: Glossa. 2, 1, 35 p., 85.
Research output: Contribution to journal 鈥� Article 鈥� peer-review - Unpublished
Breit, F., 2017, (Unpublished) In: Opticon1826. 28 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal 鈥� Article 鈥� peer-review
2014
- Published
Breit, F. & Harris, J., 2014, In: Phonology. 31, 2, p. 338-346
Research output: Contribution to journal 鈥� Book/Film/Article review
2013
- Published
Breit, F., 2013, University College London, p. 1, 22 p. (UCL Working Papers in Linguistics; vol. 25).
Research output: Working paper
2012
- Published
Breit, F., 2012, In: D茅but: the Undergraduate Journal of Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. 3, 1, p. 59-78
Research output: Contribution to journal 鈥� Article 鈥� peer-review
Activities
2024
Paper presented at the International Congress of Linguists 2024 in Pozna艅:
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鈥恊xists with a sociolinguistically dominant language.
The bilingual communities under investigation are Lombard鈥怚talian in Italy, Moselle Franconian鈥怗erman in Belgium, and Welsh鈥怑nglish 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鈥恜olitical 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鈥恠peaking family. Moselle Franconian is somewhat in between: while not officially recognised, its speakers are considered a German鈥恠peaking minority. Importantly, however, due to a situation of diglossia (Ferguson, 1959), it is
Moselle鈥怓ranconian 鈥� rather than German 鈥� 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鈥� attitudes, we collected data from 338 participants aged between 24鈥�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 鈥� notably gender 鈥� while attitude dimensions such as status and solidarity will also be explored.
Preliminary results suggest potential links between bilingual language policy and speakers鈥�
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)Invited talk presented at the UCL Linguistics Seminar
6 Sep 2024
Activity: Invited talk (Invited speaker)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:
Speakers鈥� 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,鈥�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鈥� 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鈥揑talian (Italy) and Welsh鈥揈nglish (UK). Results from 163 participants
aged between 24鈥�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 鈥� 16 Jun 2024
Links:
Paper presented at VALS-ASLA 2024:
Asymmetries and inequalities between major languages and regional/minority/endangered languages are often reflected in 鈥� as well as a consequence of 鈥� 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 (M枚ller, 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鈥� 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鈥� attitudes, while the type of 鈥渂enign neglect鈥� (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 鈥� 13 Feb 2024
Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
2023
Paper presented at the 2023 Western Conference on Linguistics: Initial syllable faithfulness is a well-established and strong bias against alternations affecting the left edge of the word (e.g. Trubetzkoy 1939, Steriade 1994, Beckman 1998, Casali 1998, Alber 2001, Smith 2002, Barnes 2002, Becker et al. 2012). This is reflected in the disproportionally important role word onsets play in word recognition (Beckman 1998, Smith 2002). As Smith (2002) argues, such initial alternations must, if anything, improve recognisability, e.g. by increasing prominence for the parser.
11 Nov 2023
Links:
Paper presented at Linguistics Beyond and Within 2023:
Speakers鈥� 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 鈥� as opposed to a single measure 鈥� should become the norm, as it has done in other research areas.
13 Oct 2023
Links:
Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on Multilingualism and Multilingual Education
12 Oct 2023
Links:
Paper presented at Documenting languages, Documenting Cultures 2023. The conference focuses on the topic of language documentation from the various perspectives offered by different 鈥榤inority鈥� 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:
Public outreach presentation at the Ll欧n and Eifionydd National Eisteddfod 2023
12 Aug 2023
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition (Speaker)Taught an advanced course on the Morphosyntax-Phonology Interface and an Introduction to Melodic Representation.
24 Jul 2023 鈥� 5 Aug 2023
Activity: Participation in Academic workshop, seminar, course (Invited speaker)Paper presented at the Welsh Linguistics Seminar
27 Jun 2023
Activity: Invited talk (Speaker)Paper presented at Approaches to Phonology and Phonetics
24 Jun 2023
Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
2021
Paper presented at the Bilbao Morpho-Phonology Circle
27 Jan 2021
Activity: Invited talk (Invited speaker)
2019
Paper presented at S茅minaire P3 (Phon茅tique, Phonologie, Prosodie) at Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes, CNRS/Universit茅 de Nantes
16 May 2019
Activity: Invited talk (Invited speaker)Paper presented at the Atelier de phonologie, Laboratoire Sturcures Formelles du Langage, CNRS/Paris 8
15 May 2019
Activity: Invited talk (Invited speaker)
2018
Paper presented at the UConn LingLunch
24 Apr 2018
Activity: Invited talk (Invited speaker)