DIRECTIONS FOR STRENGTHENING INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS IN THE LINGUISTIC PERCEPTIONS OF NATIONAL MINORITIES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24234/scientific.v3i53.405Keywords:
national minorities, lexicon, word perception, semantic differential, native and foreign languagesAbstract
The object of the research is intercultural communication. The purpose of the article is to identify the specific features of foreign language (English) acquisition in the context of studying national minorities living in the Republic of Armenia. Research methods include observation, interviews, and the analysis of specific situations related to communicative abilities of junior schoolchildren in both their native and foreign languages. These methods are based on the knowledge of Armenian as the primary means of communication, as well as on the analysis of the audio recordings conducted with the participants, focusing on the phonetic structure of words, vocabulary, and the semantic transmission of thoughts or judgments.
Research hypothesis of the study: It is assumed that learners from national minorities, through their knowledge of Armenian, are able—by means of word and sentence transformation mechanisms—to adequately perceive and understand written and spoken foreign language discourse, relying on the lexicon of their native language and their sentence construction techniques.
Results of the study: Children from national minorities learn a foreign language relatively easily through Armenian, since Armenian, as a branch of the Indo-European language family, enables the relatively easy articulation of English sounds.
Main conclusion: Differences in phonetic structure of words, lexicon, and sentence construction techniques used by the schoolchildren from national minorities - both in their native language and in the state language - are realized according to a certain logic, primarily based on the semantic perception of words and sentences and on an adequate understanding of lexical semantics.
References
Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. Cambridge University Press.
Bekerman, Z., & Geisen, T. (Eds.). (2011). International handbook of migration, minorities and education: Understanding cultural and social differences in processes of learning. Springer.
Cook, V. (2002). Background to the L2 user: Multicompetence and its implications. In J. Cenoz & U. Jessner (Eds.), The multilingual lexicon. Springer.
Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research, 49(2). https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543049002222
Durgunoğlu, A. Y., Nagy, W. E., & Hancin Bhatt, B. J. (1993). Cross language transfer of phonological awareness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(3). https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.85.3.453
Ellis, R. (2015). Understanding second language acquisition (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. (2019). Fifth periodical report presented to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in accordance with Article 15 of the Charter, Armenia.
Fishman, J. A. (Ed.). (1999). Handbook of language & ethnic identity. Oxford University Press.
Gass, S., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition: An introductory course (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Gorter, D., Zenotz, V., & Cenoz, J. (Eds.). (2014). Minority languages and multilingual education: Bridging the local and the global. Springer.
Hogan-Brun, G., & O’Rourke, B. (Eds.). (2019). The Palgrave handbook of minority languages and communities. Palgrave Macmillan.
Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. Routledge.
Kehui Zhang, Sun, X., Flores Gaona, Z., Yu, C. L., Eggleston, R. L., Nickerson, N., & Tardif, T. (2025). Cross linguistic transfer in bilingual children’s phonological and morphological awareness skills: A longitudinal perspective. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 28(2). https://doi.org/10.1017/S136672892300XXXX
Lallier, M., & Carreiras, M. (2018). Cross linguistic transfer in bilinguals reading in two alphabetic orthographies: The grain size accommodation hypothesis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1319-7
Marian, V., & Shook, A. (2012). The cognitive benefits of being bilingual. Cerebrum, 2012, 13.
Murodullayeva, S. A. (2024). The impact of multilingualism and bilingualism on language learning. Pedagogs.
Odlin, T. (1989). Language transfer: Cross-linguistic influence in language learning. Cambridge University Press.
Pienemann, M. (1998). Language processing and second language development: Processability theory. John Benjamins.
Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/11.2.129
Torrijos, M. del M. R. (2024). Effects of cross linguistic transfer on bilingual children’s linguistic structure awareness. In Bilingual children & language acquisition.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds. & Trans.). Harvard University Press.
Zeytounyan, A. (2022). The role of national minorities in the local self-government system in the context of community consolidation in Armavir Province [Analytical report]. Armavir.
Zinkin, N. I. (1968). Mechanisms of speech. Mouton.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Vladimir Karapetyan, Marianna Amiraghyan, Mariam Ispiryan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
