The Impact of Combined Trilingualism on Disabled People’s Language and Cognitive Behavior: An Integrative Model

The study, The Impact of Combined Trilingualism on Disabled People’s Language and Cognitive Behavior: An Integrative Model, focuses on a number of highly topical issues concerning trilingualism as a unique linguistic and cognitive phenomenon. Exploring combined trilingualism (the acquisition of three languages under different conditions and at different ages), this work is based on experimental data derived from Russian bilinguals (native speakers of the Permyak and Russian languages or the Tatar and Russian languages) studying a third (English) as a foreign language. This resulted in an integrative combined trilingualism model consisting of three levels: 1) level of descriptive features of combined trilingualism determined by a number of variables; 2) level of language behavior representing specifics of cross-linguistic interactions in combined trilinguals which manifest themselves both in the mental lexicon structures and directly in speech; and 3) level of cognitive process modeling the influence of combined trilingualism on executive functions of a person.