Understanding Language Attrition through Orthography

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

• Originality/Novelty: Is the question original and well defined? Do the results provide an advance in current knowledge?

Yes.

• Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses and speculations carefully identified as such?

There are no results. This paper reads like the introductory chapter of a thesis.

Given this, I’m not sure exactly what it is supposed to be -- if this is supposed to be a review rather than just a qualitative summary of some of the literature, then clearly effect sizes and so on should be given. At present they go through some of the literature although never report any of this. If there are conflicting findings as e.g., reported on page 184 then it would be useful to have effect sizes and p-vales and so on. One might gain some idea of whether reporting bias is inflating the results if this done or whether the results are reasonable. Should this be there for an opinion piece? I’m not sure, but clearly opinions would be better if backed by analyses

There is also stuff in there that doesn’t seem worthwhile at all. For example, the authors suggest eye-tracking, EEG and MEG might be useful and that is no doubt true. However, they never actually go over any of the effects or components that would be of interest. If they want the article to be useful, then they need to go beyond this and tell people guidelines and things they should be looking for in their experiments using this technology. No doubt any technology would be useful fNRIs, fMRI,... it's just what the question is that you want to answer.

• Quality of Presentation: Is the article written in an appropriate way? Are the data and analyses presented appropriately? Are the highest standards for presentation of the results used?

The article is written well.

• Scientific Soundness: is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Are the analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Are the data robust enough to draw the conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results?

There is no study.

• Interest to the Readers: Are the conclusions interesting for the readership of the Journal? Will the paper attract a wide readership, or be of interest only to a limited number of people? (please see the Aims and Scope of the journal)

It might well be of interest in terms of the area examined.

• Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work provide an advance towards the current knowledge? Do the authors have addressed an important long-standing question with smart experiments?

No experiments are done.

• English Level: Is the English language appropriate and understandable?

Yes, the language is fine.

Author Response

Thanks for your review. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an opinion paper discussing the role of second language (L2) on the attrition of L1 orthographic performance of bilinguals. The paper addresses a topic that is underresearched in the literature. There are proposals for studying the orthographic effects by quantifying differences between mono- and bilingual populations. The paper proposes some useful research methods for this purpose.

Line 19/line 25: you need citations for these

Before section 3, the authors should define in brief what is bilingualism taking into account the different types of bilingualism (e.g., simultaneous, sequential, etc.) as this might be crucial for the acquisition of an L2.

Lines 233-246: it is not clear whether these hypotheses are developed by the author(s) or are found elsewhere in the literature. The author(s) has to mention this in the paper.

Line 248: Why it is difficult to control L1-L2 phonological categories overlap?

It would be good to see how the authors evaluate the hypotheses. For example, which hypothesis is more likely to be accepted and why, according to previous findings in the literature.  

The authors refer to possible attrition of L1 orthography under the influence of L2. It is of interest to refer to the practical outcomes of this attrition. For example, if H2 is accepted, is there any chance to see the replacement of L1 unique graphemes with phonologically or visually similar L2 graphemes?

Author Response

Reviewer 2 - This is an opinion paper discussing the role of second language (L2) on the attrition of L1 orthographic performance of bilinguals. The paper addresses a topic that is underresearched in the literature. There are proposals for studying the orthographic effects by quantifying differences between mono- and bilingual populations. The paper proposes some useful research methods for this purpose.

First of all, the authors would like to sincerely thank the Reviewer for their comments and for their positive evaluation of this opinion paper. We have carefully considered all Reviewer´s comments and followed them fully when revising the paper. We believe we have been able to meet all concerns raised by the reviewers. This doubtlessly helped us to considerably improve our work. Below, we provide a response to all the reviewer´s comments and suggestions, clarifying the changes made in the manuscript regarding each point (original referee comments are quoted in full):

 

Reviewer 2 - Line 19/line 25: you need citations for these

Thank you very much for your suggestion. Appropriate references have been added (please see lines 26-27).

 

Reviewer 2 - Before section 3, the authors should define in brief what is bilingualism taking into account the different types of bilingualism (e.g., simultaneous, sequential, etc.) as this might be crucial for the acquisition of an L2.

We thank the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. A new paragraph has been added in order to address the differences between onset age of L2 acquisition for the efficient learning and performance in L2 (please see lines 30-40).

 

Reviewer 2 - Lines 233-246: it is not clear whether these hypotheses are developed by the author(s) or are found elsewhere in the literature. The author(s) has to mention this in the paper.

Thank you very much for this comment. We have now clarified this point highlighting the fact that previous research on L1 attrition has extensively addressed these hypotheses at other linguistic levels and importantly with no clear evidence regarding the causal mechanisms of this phenomenon (please see lines 245-248).

 

Reviewer 2 - Line 248: Why it is difficult to control L1-L2 phonological categories overlap?

Thank you very much for your question. This sentence has been rephrased now to clarify that in the spoken domain, contrarily to the written domain, the overlap between phonological categories that are mapped into different graphemes across both languages might be more difficult to test, especially considering that phonological categories can be highly dependent on the word’s context (please see lines 263-267).

 

Reviewer 2 - It would be good to see how the authors evaluate the hypotheses. For example, which hypothesis is more likely to be accepted and why, according to previous findings in the literature.  

Thank you very much for your suggestion. A new paragraph has been added stating what it would be the most likely acceptable hypothesis according to recent findings in L1 attrition research (please see lines 287-295).

 

Reviewer 2 - The authors refer to possible attrition of L1 orthography under the influence of L2. It is of interest to refer to the practical outcomes of this attrition. For example, if H2 is accepted, is there any chance to see the replacement of L1 unique graphemes with phonologically or visually similar L2 graphemes?

Thank you very much for this comment. Following the this suggestion, we have now included the information regarding the practical outcomes of L1 attrition when the different hypotheses are considered (please see lines 302-309).

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper "Understanding Language Attrition through Orthography" proposes a short literature review about a variety of aspects of attrition research, and then outlines a methodological framework for the investigation of L1 attrition with respect to orthographic processing, specifically in Russian-English bilinguals. The idea to focus on orthographic processing in L1 attrition is compelling and innovative, however, I do not think that “framework” outlined is mature enough to be published. First of all, the

literature review is rather unfocused and takes up a lot of issues that have already been discussed elsewhere. The original contribution of this review is not clear and it does not at all take into account literacy as the references quoted may refer without distinction to L1 attrition in late bilinguals, in child bilinguals or in adoptees. The “framework” proposed builds on only one orthographic factor that is the type of overlap between letters of different scripts. It is not embedded in a model of reading and does not refer to the rather broad literature on written work recognition in bilinguals. Moreover, the link between the literature reviewed and the proposed methodology is not apparent. In sum, I think that the paper has to be substantially improved.

Author Response

Thanks for your review. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

It's hard to see what else the authors could do here.