What does crosslinguistic mean?
Crosslinguistic is an adjective describing anything that involves or compares more than one language. It is a staple of academic linguistics, where researchers use it to label studies that examine whether a grammatical pattern, sound change, or learning process holds across languages or differs between them. A crosslinguistic study of plurals, for instance, would look at how several languages form plural nouns rather than focusing on just one. The term also describes phenomena that operate across languages, such as crosslinguistic influence, where knowledge of one language shapes performance in another. It carries a scholarly, neutral tone and rarely appears outside specialist writing on language. Commonly spelled either "crosslinguistic" or "cross-linguistic", it derives from the Latin root lingua (tongue, language). Its usefulness lies in its precision: it signals explicitly that conclusions rest on evidence drawn from multiple languages, not from a single linguistic system.
adjectiveRelating to or involving a comparison of two or more languages; used especially of research that examines how phenomena differ or correspond across different language systems.
- Of or relating to comparison across two or more languages, especially in linguistic research.
- Occurring across languages, as in crosslinguistic influence or transfer from one language to another.
"The study revealed striking crosslinguistic differences in how children acquire the passive voice."
"Crosslinguistic comparisons show that not all languages mark tense in the same way."
"Her dissertation examines crosslinguistic influence in bilingual children's vocabulary development."
It's one of the few words linguists reach for whenever they want to say 'we checked — and this happens in more than one language.'
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of crosslinguistic
The word combines "cross", indicating movement or comparison across boundaries, with "linguistic", which derives from the Latin lingua, meaning tongue or language. As modern linguistics matured into a discipline that systematically compared languages rather than studying them in isolation, terms like crosslinguistic emerged in twentieth-century scholarly usage to name this comparative approach. It shares its Latin root lingua with related words such as bilingual, multilingual, and linguist, all of which concern language in some form.
Related word forms
How crosslinguistic is actually used
A technical term used almost exclusively in linguistics and language sciences. It is frequently written with a hyphen as "cross-linguistic", and both spellings are widely accepted in academic publishing. The adverb "crosslinguistically" is common in scholarly prose.
Easily confused with crosslinguistic
Cross-cultural concerns comparisons between cultures or societies, whereas crosslinguistic concerns comparisons between languages themselves.
Interlingual typically describes something existing or operating between languages (such as translation), while crosslinguistic usually describes comparative research across languages.