Language Attrition and Lived Experiences of Attrition among Greek Speakers in London

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General evaluation

The paper investigates attrition effects in a group of L1-Greek L2-English speakers and explores their views on attrition and their feelings about their own use of both languages. More specifically, it presents the results from two studies, namely a psycholinguistic and a sociolinguistic one, thus combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. The paper provides a novel contribution in an attempt to describe and account for the phenomenon under investigation, and as such, it makes a substantial contribution to the field. The paper is well written and guides the reader through the discussion of data collected through the experimental tasks and the interviews in a step by step manner. A number of ‘content’ and ‘style’ issues needs to be taken into consideration before the final submission of the paper. These minor revisions and clarifications are listed below:

Specific line-by-line comments

p.1, l.41: Add a comma after ‘Montrul’.

p.1, l.45: The comma should not be in italics.

p.2, l.49: Replace ‘papers’ with ‘studies’. Marmaridou-Protopapa (1984) is a PhD thesis.

p.2, l.54: Check font size and font type.

p.2, l.63: Replace the second mention of ‘attrition’ with ‘it’.

p.2, l.71: Delete the phrase ‘in verbal fluency’.

p.2, l.74: Please add the phrase ‘In Study 2’ before ‘The analysis’.

p.2, l.74: Check spacing.

p.2, l.85: Check phrasing.

p.2, l.91: It should be made clear from the beginning of the discussion in this section that the presence vs absence of the article has to do with plural nominals.

pp.2-3, Table 1: Check the use of full stops in all examples.

p.3, Table 1: What does the asterisk mean after the term ‘existential’? Please clarify.

p.3, l.100: ‘highly educated’ should be defined.

p.3, l.101, l.106: It’s not clear what the number after the decimal point (.34/ .13) means wrt age. It would be clearer if this referred to months, e.g. 32;11.

p.3, l.107-8: The point about the education level should be made only about the control group here. Please also see comment p.3, l.100.

p.4, section 2.1: It would be clearer and easier to follow for the reader if examples were provided for each case. In general, Study 1 is briefly presented in comparison to Study 2. I suggest more space is devoted to Study 1 so that it becomes proportionally equal in the paper.

p.4, l.134: Add a comma after Patra et al.

p.4, l.151: Add ‘the’ before ‘number’.

p.6, l.210: Space before ‘1994’.

p.8, l.272-297: I am not quite sure that the examples provided here (despite the fact that they are very elucidating) should appear in the introduction of Study 2. My feeling is that they should appear in section 3.2 (Findings).

p.8, l.274: The translation of the name should appear after the translation of the example (l.276).

p.8, l.278: As above.

p.8, l.285: As above.

p.8, l.294: As above.

p.9, l.351: No space before ‘Are’.

p.10, l.378: Explain briefly what the thematic analysis comprises.

p.10, l.378: Add ‘see’ before ‘Braun and Clarke’.

p.12, l.423: New paragraph before ‘Derision’.

p.12, l.438: It’s not clear which group is the ‘second group’.

p.16, l.496: ‘hear’ should become ‘her’.

p.16, l.499: Put ‘See Extract 7’ in parentheses.

p.17, Extract 8: Check whether ‘εξηζητημένες’ is what Anna actually said. The correct form is ‘εξεζητημένες’.

p.17, l.511: Use either numbers or words for ‘12’ and ‘three’.

p.18, l.540: ‘not’ should be ‘nor’.

p.19, l.558: ‘Our participants’ should be “The participants of our study’.

p.19, l.565: Add ‘of’ ‘instead’

p.19, l.585: ‘were’ should become ‘was’.

p.19, l.591: as above.

p.20, l.599: Delete one of the two instances of ‘then’.

p.20, l.640: ‘Spiroa’ should be ‘Spiros’.

p.20, l.633: Space after ‘21’.

pp.20-22: The References section should be checked for consistency, e.g. commas, full stops, colons after journal volumes. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The article is an interesting attempt to trace language attrition in a group described as “L1-Greek L2-4 English speakers”. This group pertains to individuals who migrated to London mostly during the last decade. The trigger for the migration is reported to be the Greek debt crisis, although it is a well-known fact that London (and UK in general) has always attracted a large number of Greek-speaking migrants from Greece and Cyprus.

The article comprises a psycholinguistic study, a verbal fluency test and a sociolinguistic study in the form of semi-open interviews. It concludes that there is no significant distinction between monolinguals Greek speakers and bilinguals L1 Greek speakers living in London with respect to grammatical performance. However, they observe that “the bilinguals’ lexical access is impaired” (p. 19). This evidence is backed up by testimonies of bilinguals claiming that they experience difficulties in retrieving lexicon from Greek. Thus, the degree of attrition in the bilingual group is still restricted but is evident in the lexical domain. What is more, the bilingual individuals are reported to express their frustration about the decline in their lexical competence.

The main strength of this study is the fact that the study investigates attrition in the afore-mentioned bilingual group for the very first time and at a very early stage. Additionally, the paper combines quantitative and qualitative research in a reliable way and the conducted tests seem to be well designed. Nevertheless, there is a number of problematic points within the article which should be improved before the paper get published. These are:

a. The concept of “linguistic purism” that is featured on the title is only marginally discussed in the paper and does not appear to have a focal role in the argumentation. In fact, it is rather confusing that this topic is brought up, given that the bilinguals are not reported to be dialect speakers.

b. It is a wider theoretical problem whether the spontaneous inability to retrieve a lexeme is a matter of genuine language attrition or an effect that has to do with specific domains in life within a migratory context. For instance, when an individual uses a foreign language for studies or daily work routine some terms will enter the mental lexicon in this foreign language. This is a phenomenon that can be attested even in a non-migratory context, modern digital life or science terminology is a good example of the fact that English will enter the daily speech not due to attrition but due to usage frequency or specialization. In a migratory domain a number of bureaucratic terms will also inevitably enter the daily lexicon of a migrant. While I do not refute that generally the very beginning of lexical attrition can be found in cases like the ones reported here, it is highly questionable whether the difficulty the speakers report is an instant psycholinguistic “blocking” of memory or the fact that the learnt some terms in the L2 language for reasons I explained above.

c. Similarly, I strongly doubt whether examples such as [dineˡraci] really constitute a case of attrition or, rather, a spontaneous and playful formation with emotional and circumstantial connotations. More examples of that kind should be presented in order to really discuss about a lexical shift.

d. The article does not provide much information about the background of the informants and practically the only crucial variable in the research is the monolinguals vs. bilinguals dichotomy which however is not sufficient enough in order to account for different degrees of language attrition from one speaker to another. Does age, gender, years of stay in London, occupation or any other factor play a role here?

e. The authors are right to reach the conclusion that attrition is not as extended as it may be considered by the bilingual informants. In my view, this point should be highlighted.

f. The article is well written, however there are several repetitions in the text flow. Moreover, some aspects of the methodology could be presented in a more detailed way.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a very interesting combination of two studies on attrition in L1-Greek L2-English speakers in the UK. Both studies are original, as they shed light on issues that had not been investigated previously. The first part is an experimental study on verbal fluency, while the second one was a sociolinguistic study on the participants’ lived experiences of attrition.

Both studies were well motivated and original. The second one, i.e. the sociolinguistic one, stood out, as it was better presented than the first one.

The experimental study had serious shortcomings regarding the presentation of its methodology and results. It lacked clear sections about Method, which is usually divided in certain subsections, such as “Participants”, “Materials/Design”, “Procedure”, and “Method of statistical analysis”. Headings would help, but even without them, only the information about participants was clearly presented. Crucial pieces of information were missing; these had to do with the design, what was measured and how, how those measures were designed to be taken, what the subjects were instructed to do in the experiments, what method of statistical analysis was employed, and, in some cases, what the actual statistical results were. All these issues make the presentation of the study very problematic, as in essence they make it not replicable: at many points it is not clear what was done and how it was analysed. This means that the reliability of the findings is low.

These serious issues in the presentation of the study unfortunately render it unsuitable for publication, as it does not meet the academic standards of reporting experimental studies.

The paper could be broken down to two different studies: the experimental one and the sociolinguistic one. They are loosely connected in this paper and are actually to a great degree quite independent as studies. The experimental study needs substantial rewriting and reorganisation (and at places arguably a better statistical analysis). However, the sociolinguistic study, with a bit of elaboration, can become suitable for publication as an independent study.

Please also see comments in the pdf version of the paper on specific issues.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The article has been thoroughly revised and can be accepted for publication.