Search Results (10)

Late bilingual speakers immersed in a second language (L2) environment often experience the non-pathological attrition of their first language (L1), exhibiting selective and reversible changes in L1 processing and production. While attrition research has largely focused on long-term residents in anglophone countries, examining changes primarily within a single L1 domain, the present study employs a novel experimental design to investigate L1 attrition, alongside L2 acquisition, across three domains (i.e., the lexicon, syntax–pragmatics interface, and prosody) in two groups of L1-English L2-Italian late bilinguals: long-term residents in Italy vs. university students in the UK. A total of 112 participants completed online tasks assessing lexical retrieval, anaphora resolution, and sentence stress patterns in both languages. First, both bilingual groups showed comparable levels of semantic interference in lexical retrieval. Second, at the syntax–pragmatics interface, only residents in Italy showed signs of L1 attrition in real-time processing of anaphora, while resolution preferences were similar between groups; in the L2, both bilingual groups demonstrated target-like preferences, despite some slowdown in processing. Third, while both groups showed some evidence of target-like L2 prosody, with residents in Italy matching L1-Italian sentence stress patterns closely, prosodic attrition was only reported for residents in Italy in exploratory analyses. Overall, this study supports the notion of L1 attrition as a natural consequence of bilingualism—one that is domain- and experience-dependent, unfolds along a continuum, and involves a complex (and possibly inverse) relationship between L1 and L2 performance that warrants further investigation. Full article

In this paper, we follow up on previous findings concerning first language (L1) perceptual attrition to examine the role of phoneme frequency in influencing variation across L1 contrasts. We hypothesized that maintenance of L1 Korean contrasts (i.e., resistance to attrition) in L1 Korean-L2 English bilinguals would be correlated with frequency, such that better-maintained contrasts would also be more frequent in the L1. To explore this hypothesis, we collected frequency data on three Korean contrasts (/n/-/l/, /t/-/t*/, /s/-/s*/) and compared these data to perceptual attrition data from a speeded sequence recall task testing the perception and phonological encoding of the target contrasts. Results only partially supported the hypothesis. On the one hand, /n/-/l/, the best-maintained contrast, was the most frequent contrast overall. On the other hand, /n/-/l/ also evinced the greatest frequency asymmetry between the two members of the contrast (meaning that it was the least important to perceive accurately); furthermore, /s/-/s*/, which was less well maintained than /t/-/t*/, was actually more frequent than /t/-/t*/. These results suggest that disparities in perceptual attrition across contrasts cannot be attributed entirely to frequency differences. We discuss the implications of the findings for future research examining frequency effects in L1 perceptual change. Full article

The purpose of this study was to investigate attrition effects in a group of L1-Greek–L2-English speakers and to explore their views on attrition and their feelings about their own use of both languages. The first part (n = 32) was a psycholinguistic study measuring semantic and formal verbal fluency which was part of a broader project. The second part (n = 14) was a sociolinguistic study of semi-structured interviews aiming to gain insights into participants’ lived experiences of attrition. In verbal fluency, monolinguals outperformed bilinguals in the number of correct responses in both semantic and formal fluency. The analysis of the interview transcripts suggested that attriters experience attrition negatively, as a loss of a competence they once had, with two types of negative experiences emerging more prominently: (a) the realisation that they have difficulties with lexical retrieval and (b) stigmatising and judgemental comments by (non)-attriters. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this study on attriters can give us unique insights into their lived experience of attrition. Full article

This study examines the plasticity of native language intonation in English-Austrian German sequential bilinguals who have migrated to Austria in adulthood by comparing it to that of monolingual English and monolingual Austrian control speakers. Intonation was analysed along four intonation dimensions proposed by the L2 Intonation Learning theory (LILt): the inventory of categorical phonological elements (‘systemic’ dimension), their phonetic implementation (‘realizational’), the meaning associated with phonological elements (‘semantic’), and their frequency of use (‘frequency’). This allowed us to test whether each intonation dimension is equally permeable to L2-on-L1 influences. The results revealed L2-on-L1 effects on each dimension. These consistently took the form of assimilation. The extent of assimilation appeared to depend on whether the cross-language differences were gradient or categorical, with the former predominantly resulting in intermediate merging and the latter in a complete transfer. The results suggest that native intonation remains plastic in all its dimensions, resulting in pervasive modifications towards the L2. Finally, in this first application of the LILt to the context of L1 attrition, the study confirms the model’s suitability not only to acquisition of L2 intonation but also for predicting where modifications of L1 intonation are likely to occur. Full article

(1) Background: Given the high prevalence of childhood mental health problems and their long-lasting negative consequences if left untreated, it is important to investigate factors that affect family engagement in psychological interventions such as Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), including caregiver treatment readiness and readiness for change (RFC). Specifically, Latine families experience greater mental health disparities and have unique cultural factors that affect engagement. The current project examined caregiver pretreatment readiness among primarily Latine Spanish- and English-speaking families. (2) Methods: Participants were 100 caregivers (96% female) of young children ages 2 to 7 who sought PCIT services from a community mental health center in Washington, D.C. Families completed written and observational assessment measures at pretreatment and throughout PCIT, which were used for the current study. (3) Results: Caregivers reported high readiness and importance of treatment at intake, with higher RFC among Spanish-speaking caregivers. Regardless of language, caregivers who reported more frequent and problematic child misbehavior and who were from a multi-caregiver household tended to report more RFC and treatment importance at intake. Pretreatment RFC also predicted family completion of the first phase of PCIT although there was a high attrition rate for the sample as only 18% of families completed treatment. (4) Conclusions: These findings provide insight into the implementation of standard PCIT among Spanish- and English speaking families and highlight the benefits of assessing pretreatment caregiver readiness to inform clinical decision-making. Full article

The decay in the proficiency of the native language (L1), known as first language attrition, is one of the least understood phenomena associated with the acquisition of a second language (L2). Indeed, the exact cause for the deterioration in L1 performance, be that either the interference from L2 acquisition or the less frequent use of L1, still remains elusive. In this opinion paper, we focus on one largely understudied aspect of L1 attrition—namely, the erosion of the L1 orthographic knowledge under the influence of L2 orthography. In particular, we propose to study differences in orthographic processing between mono- and bilingual populations as an approach, which, in turn, will allow to address both cognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying L1 attrition. We discuss relevant experimental paradigms, variable manipulations and appropriate research methods that may help disentangle the largely debated question of L2 interference vs. L1 disuse, clarifying the nature of the L1 orthographic attrition. Full article

Variation among closely related languages may reveal the inner workings of language acquisition, loss and innovation. This study of the existing literature and of selected interviews from recent narrative corpora compares the marking of evidentiality and epistemic modality in Chuquisaca, Bolivian Quechua with its closely related variety in Cuzco, Peru and investigates three hypotheses: that morpho-syntactic attrition proceeds in reverse order of child language acquisition, that convergence characterizes the emergence of grammatical forms different from L1 and L2 in contact situations, and that the Quechua languages are undergoing typological shift toward more isolating morphology. It appears that reportive -sis disappeared first in Bolivia, with eyewitness/validator -min retaining only the validator function. This finding seems to concord with reverse acquisition since it has previously been claimed that epistemic marking is acquired earlier than evidential marking in Cuzco. Meanwhile, Spanish and Quechua in nearby Cochabamba are claimed to mark reportive evidentiality via freestanding verbs of saying. I explore the reportive use of ñiy ‘to say’ in Chuquisaca as compared to Cochabamba and Cuzco and suggest the need for comparative statistical studies of evidential and epistemic marking in Southern Quechua. Full article

The purpose of this investigation was to trace first (L1) and second language (L2) segmental speech development in the Austrian German–English late bilingual Arnold Schwarzenegger over a period of 40 years, which makes it the first study to examine a bilingual’s speech development over several decades in both their languages. To this end, acoustic measurements of voice onset time (VOT) durations of word-initial plosives (Study 1) and formant frequencies of the first and second formant of Austrian German and English monophthongs (Study 2) were conducted using speech samples collected from broadcast interviews. The results of Study 1 showed a merging of Schwarzenegger’s German and English voiceless plosives in his late productions as manifested in a significant lengthening of VOT duration in his German plosives, and a shortening of VOT duration in his English plosives, closer to L1 production norms. Similar findings were evidenced in Study 2, revealing that some of Schwarzenegger’s L1 and L2 vowel categories had moved closer together in the course of L2 immersion. These findings suggest that both a bilingual’s first and second language accent is likely to develop and reorganize over time due to dynamic interactions between the first and second language system. Full article

The present study examines the perceived L1 accent of two groups of native Spaniards in the United Kingdom, Spanish teachers, and non-teachers, alongside monolingual controls in Spain. While the bilingual groups were carefully matched on a range of background variables, the teachers used Spanish significantly more at work where they constantly need to co-activate it alongside English. This allowed us to test the relative effect of reduced L1 use and dual language activation in first language attrition directly. To obtain global accentedness ratings, monolingual native Spanish listeners living in Spain participated in an online perception experiment in which they rated short speech samples extracted from a picture-based narrative produced by each speaker in terms of their perceived nativeness, and indicated which features they associated with non-nativeness. The results revealed significantly greater foreign-accent ratings for teachers than non-teachers and monolinguals, but no difference between the latter two. Non-native speech was associated with a range of segmental and suprasegmental features. These results suggest that language teachers who teach their L1 in an L2-speaking environment may be particularly prone to L1 attrition since they need to co-activate both their languages in professional settings and are regularly exposed to non-native speech from L2 learners. Full article

Research in the past few decades generally supported a nonselective view of bilingual lexical access, where a bilingual’s two languages are both active during monolingual processing. However, recent work by Costa et al. (2017) brought this into question by reinterpreting evidence for nonselectivity in a selective manner. We manipulated the factor of first language (L1) attrition in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment to disentangle Costa and colleagues’ selective processing proposal versus the traditional nonselective processing view of bilingual lexical access. Spanish–English bilinguals demonstrated an N400 effect of L1 attrition during implicit L1 processing in a second language (L2) semantic judgment task, indicating the contribution of variable L1 lexical access during L2 processing. These results are incompatible with Costa and colleagues’ selective model, adding to the literature supporting a nonselective view of bilingual lexical access. Full article