Emanuel Bylund

Emanuel "Manne" Bylund is Professor of General Linguistics at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, with a continuing affiliation at Stockholm University where he did his doctoral and postdoctoral work. His research keeps circling one question: how age of acquisition and bilingualism jointly shape the language system, including the L1 one thought one already had.

Two strands. The first, closely tied to the Stockholm programme with Kenneth Hyltenstam and Niclas Abrahamsson, argues that age of acquisition rather than bilingualism itself is the primary determinant of less-than-nativelike L2 ultimate attainment, pushing back against accounts that explain away critical-period effects as by-products of being bilingual. The second strand investigates how age of L2 acquisition reshapes L1 event conceptualisation in Spanish-Swedish bilinguals, bringing linguistic-relativity questions into SLA territory.

Career

• PhD and postdoctoral work at Stockholm University
• Professor of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
• Continuing appointment at Stockholm University
• Frequent collaborator with Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson on age-of-acquisition research

Published Work

• "Age of acquisition – not bilingualism – is the primary determinant of less than nativelike L2 ultimate attainment," Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
• "Effects of age of L2 acquisition on L1 event conceptualization patterns," Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
• Papers on language attrition, age effects, and bilingual cognition

Influence

• Strengthens the empirical case that age effects are not reducible to bilingualism effects
• Extends the Stockholm age-of-acquisition programme into linguistic-relativity territory
• A mid-career researcher now carrying the Stockholm-Stellenbosch research network