Bilingualism reading group

Speaker: Wenjia Cai (University of Edinburgh)

Title: First language attrition at the interface among Chinese-English late bilingual speakers

Abstract: The current study aims to investigate L1 attrition effects among Chinese-English late bilinguals with different patterns of language use and lengths of residence during online processing. Previous research has rarely shown direct correlations between language use and the degree of L1 attrition (Schmid & Dusseldorp, 2010), however, the Chamorro study (2015) has found significant in-group differences after L1 attriters were re-exposed to the L1 environment for only a short period of time, indicating that the process of language attrition is not irreversible, and is sensitive to the change of language environment. The seemingly contradictory evidence can be accounted for by the distinction between competence and performance: whether it is the erosion of the knowledge or the processing deficit that we are looking for in L1 attritions studies.

The linguistic structures under investigation are “interface structures”: reflexive ziji ‘self’ and wh-topicalization. It’s been predicted by Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2011) that compared to structures within core grammars, structures lying at the syntaxdiscourse interface and syntax-pragmatics interface are less robust against language attrition, because they impose extra cognitive load, integrating information from different cognitive domains. It also argues that for late bilingual speakers, the effects of attrition do not involve the representation of knowledge but rather the efficiency of accessing and integrating the knowledge. In other words, it’s the allocation of cognitive resources, or what we usually name as “processing strategy” that is affected during the attrition process. Thus, we can assume that as the level of L1 activation fluctuates according to the circumstances (language use, length of residence etc.), the cognitive resources used to re-activate and integrate the knowledge will change accordingly, affecting the online processing performance.

Using a speeded comprehension task (binding interpretations of ziji) and a speeded acceptability judgment task (wh-topicalization), the current experiment measures the online performances when processing interface structures. The sociolinguistic questionnaire (constructed by Merel Keijzer, adapted from Schmid and Dusseldorp, 2010) is used to monitor the language use and language background. I predict that (1) attrition effects will be shown with both interface structures; (2) participants with infrequent L1 use and longer length of residence in L2 environment will display more attrition effects than those with frequent L1 use and shorter length of residence.

References

• Chamorro, G., Sorace, A., & Sturt, P. (2015). What is the source of L1 attrition? The effect of recent L1 re-exposure on Spanish speakers under L1 attrition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1–13.
• Schmid, M. S., & Dusseldorp, E. (2010). Quantitative analyses in a multivariate study of language attrition: The impact of extralinguistic factors. Second Language Research, 26(1), 125–160.
• Sorace, A. (2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(1), 1–33.