Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:15:18.922Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Losing a language in childhood: a longitudinal case study on language attrition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2014

CRISTINA FLORES*
Affiliation:
University of Minho, Portugal
*
[*]Address for correspondence: Cristina Maria Moreira Flores, Departamento de Estudos Germanísticos e Eslavos, Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710 Braga, Portugal. tel: 00351962324988; e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This paper is based upon a longitudinal study of L2 attrition in a bilingual child who grew up in an L2 migration background (Germany) and moved to the country of origin (Portugal) at the age of nine, experiencing a dominance shift from theL2 tothe L1. The study aims to analyze the effects of language loss in L2 German. Data collection started 3 weeks after the child's immersion in the Portuguese setting and ended 18 months later. Results show first effects of language attrition after 5 months of reduced exposure to German; 18 months later the informant showed severe word retrieval difficulties and was unable to produce complete sentences in her L2. The findings thus confirm the conclusions of other studies on child language attrition, which attest to strong effects of attrition when the loss of contact with the target language occurs in childhood.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ahrenholz, B. (ed.) (2006). Kinder mit Migrationshintergrund – Spracherwerb und Fördermöglichkeiten. Freiburg i. Br.: Fillibach.Google Scholar
Altenhofen, C. (1996). Hunsrückisch in Rio Grande do Sul: Ein Beitrag zur Beschreibung einer deutschbrasilianischen Dialektvarietät im Kontakt mit dem Portugiesischen. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Bingham, S. (2007). When daddy leaves home: ninority L1 attrition in a primary bilingual child. Japan Journal of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism 13, 2643.Google Scholar
Bittner, D. (2006). Case before gender in the acquisition of German. Folia Linguistica 40(1/2), 115–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, H. (2009). Case loss in Texas German: the influence of semantic and pragmatic factors. In Barðdal, J. & Chelliah, S. (eds), The role of semantics and pragmatics in the development of case, 347–73. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1984). Der Erwerb von Kasusmarkierungen in der deutschen Kindersprache. Linguistische Berichte 89, 131.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., Meisel, J. M. & Pienemann, M. (1983). Deutsch als Zweitsprache: Der Spracherwerb ausländischer Arbeiter. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H. & Penke, M. (1992). The acquisition of agreement morphology and its syntactic consequences: new evidence on German child language from the Simone-Corpus. In Meisel, J. (ed.), The acquisition of verb placement: functional categories and V2 phenomena in language acquisition, 181223. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Clyne, M. (1991). Community languages: the Australian experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenbeiss, S., Bartke, S. & Clahsen, H. (2005/2006). Structural and lexical case in child German: evidence from language-impaired and typically-developing children. Language Acquisition 13(1), 332.Google Scholar
Flores, C. (2010). The effect of age on language attrition: evidence from bilingual returnees. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 13(4), 533–46.Google Scholar
Flores, C. (2012). Differential effects of language attrition in the domains of verb placement and object expression. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15(3), 550–67.Google Scholar
Hansen, L. (ed.) (1999). Second language attrition: evidence from Japanese contexts. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jordens, P., de Bot, K. & Trapman, H. (1989). Linguistic aspects of regression in German case marking. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 11(2), 179204.Google Scholar
Kang, S.-G. (2011). English attrition in KoreanEnglish bilingual children. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Hawai.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, D. & Aronoff, M. (1991). Morphological disintegration and reconstruction in first language attrition. In Seliger, H. W. & Vago, R. M. (eds), First language attrition, 175–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhberg, H. (1992). Longitudinal L2-attrition versus L2-acquisition in three Turkish children – empirical findings. Second Language Research 8(2), 138–54.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (2011). First and second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: re-examining the age factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Olshtain, E. (1986). The attrition of English as a second language with speakers of Hebrew. In Weltens, K., de Bot, K. & van Els, T. (eds), Language attrition in progress, 187204. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Platzack, C. (1996). The initial hypothesis of syntax: a minimalist perspective on language acquisition and attrition. In Clahsen, H. (ed.), Generative perspectives on language acquisition, 369414. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poeppel, D. & Wexler, K. (1993). The full competence hypothesis of clause structure in early German. Language 69, 133.Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. (1997). American Russian: language loss meets language acquisition. Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 4 (Ann Arbor: Μichigan Slavic Publications), 370406.Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. (2011). Reanalysis in adult heritage language: new evidence in support of attrition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33, 305–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reetz-Kurashige, A. (1999). Tracking returnees’ retention of English speaking skills: changes in verb usage over time. In Hansen, L. (ed.), Second language attrition: evidence from Japanese contexts, 2158. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothweiler, M. (2006). The acquisition of V2 and subordinate clauses in early successive acquisition of German. In Lleó, C. (ed.), Interfaces in multilingualism: acquisition, representation and processing, 91113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schmid, M. (2002). First language attrition, use and maintenance: the case of German Jews in anglophone countries. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Seliger, H. W. (1996). Primary language attrition in the context of bilingualism. In Ritchie, W. C. & Bhatia, T. K. (eds), Handbook on second language acquisition, 605–26. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2004). Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax–discourse interface: data, interpretations and methods. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7, 143–5.Google Scholar
Szagun, G. (2004). Learning by ear: on the acquisition of case and gender marking by German-speaking children with cochlear implants and with normal hearing. Journal of Child Language 31, 130.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomiyama, M. (2000). Child second language attrition: a longitudinal case study. Applied Linguistics 21(3), 304–32.Google Scholar
Tracy, R. (1986). The acquisition of case morphology in German. Linguistics 24, 4778.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tracy, R. & Thoma, D. (2009). Convergence on finite V2 clauses in L1, bilingual L1 and early L2 acquisition. In Dimroth, C. & Jordens, P. (eds), Functional categories in learner language: studies on language acquisition (SOLA), 143. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Tsimpli, I., Sorace, A., Heycock, C. & Filiaci, F. (2004). First language attrition and syntactic subjects: a study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism 8(3), 257–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turian, D. & Altenberg, E. (1991). Compensatory strategies of child first language attrition. In Seliger, H. W. & Vago, R. M. (eds), First language attrition, 207–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wegener, H. (1995a). Das Genus im DaZ-Erwerb. Beobachtungen an Kindern aus Polen, Rußland und der Türkei. In Handwerker, B. (ed.), Fremde Sprache Deutsch, 124. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Wegener, H. (1995b). Kasus und Valenz im natürlichen DaZ-Erwerb. In Eichinger, L. & Eroms, H. W. (eds), Dependenz und Valenz, 337–56. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Wittek, A. & Tomasello, M. (2005). German-speaking children's productivity with syntactic constructions and case morphology: local cues act locally. First Language 25, 103–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wojtecka, M., Schwarze, R., Grimm, A. & Schulz, P. (2013). Finiteness and verb placement in German: a challenge for early second language learners? In Amaro, J. C. et al. (eds), Proceedings of the 12th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2013), 211–21. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, online: <www.lingref.com,document#2998>.Google Scholar
Yoshitomi, A. (1999). On the loss of English as a second language by Japanese returnee children. In Hansen, L. (ed.), Second language attrition in Japanese contexts, 80111. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar