Language attrition and reactivation in the context of bilingual first language acquisition

Slavkov, Nikolay

doi:10.1080/13670050.2014.941785

Cited by 31 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…also Goodz 1989). We will explore this possibility in future research (note, though, that parents in bilingual families may consciously stick to their initial language choice pattern in spite of children not responding in their language of choice; for a well-documented recent example, see Slavkov 2014). …”

Section: Results Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingual mothers’ language choice in child-directed speech: continuity and change

Houwer

Bornstein

2016

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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An important aspect of Family Language Policy in bilingual families is parental language choice. Little is known about the continuity in parental language choice and the factors affecting it. This longitudinal study explores maternal language choice over time. Thirty-one bilingual mothers provided reports of what language(s) they spoke with their children. Mother-child interactions were videotaped when children were pre-verbal (5M), producing words in two languages (20M), and fluent speakers (53M). All children had heard two languages from birth in the home. Most mothers reported addressing children in the same single language. Observational data confirmed mothers' use of mainly a single language in interactions with their children, but also showed the occasional use of the other language in over half the sample when children were 20 months. Once children were 53 months mothers again used only the same language they reported speaking to children. These findings reveal a possible effect of children's overall level of language development and demonstrate the difficulty of adhering to a strict “one person, one language” policy. The fact that there was longitudinal continuity in the language most mothers mainly spoke with children provided children with cumulative language input learning opportunities.

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Section: Results Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingual mothers’ language choice in child-directed speech: continuity and change

Houwer

Bornstein

2016

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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“…Crucially, studies on reexposure to an attrited language in early bilinguals that could shed further light on the possible temporariness of attrition in younger bilinguals, are not yet available, except for some studies on language relearning in international adoptees (see Oh et al, 2019 , for a summary). Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence for both the observation that dominance changes are frequent and fast in young children (e.g., Slavkov, 2015 ), and that they are much slower in adults as suggested by the early studies on dominance shift discussed above, reporting periods of L2 immersion of 3–7 years, depending on the tasks used, for adults ( Lachman and Mistler-Lachman, 1976 ; Frenck-Mestre, 1993 ) and even adolescents ( Mägiste, 1979 ). However, we have to consider two more dimensions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A small number of studies conducted with adoptees, re-exposed to their native language later in life, mainly focus on the reminiscents of a childhood language and on the benefits of later relearning (e.g., Oh et al, 2019 ; Pierce et al, 2019 ). The only longitudinal study in the context of attrition we know of is a study describing dominance shifts in an English-Bulgarian bilingual child ( Slavkov, 2015 ), but given the young age of the child (1;7–2;3) it seems difficult to generalize to what happens in adults.…”

Section: Time Scales Of Dominance Shift and Attritionmentioning

confidence: 99%

First Language Attrition and Dominance: Same Same or Different?

Köpke

Genevska-Hanke

2018

Front. Psychol.

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We explore the relationship between first language attrition and language dominance, defined here as the relative availability of each of a bilingual’s languages with respect to language processing. We assume that both processes might represent two stages of one and the same phenomenon (Schmid and Köpke, 2017; Köpke, 2018). While many researchers agree that language dominance changes repeatedly over the lifespan (e.g., Silva-Corvalan and Treffers-Daller, 2015), little is known about the precise time scales involved in dominance shifts and attrition. We investigate these time scales in a longitudinal case study of pronominal subject production by a near-native L2-German (semi-null subject and topic-drop but non-pro-drop) and L1-Bulgarian (pro-drop) bilingual speaker with 17 years of residence in Germany. This speaker’s spontaneous speech showed a significantly higher rate of overt pronominal subjects in her L1 than the controls’ rates when tested in Germany. After 3 weeks of L1-reexposure in Bulgaria, however, attrition effects disappeared and the overt subject rate fell within the monolinguals’ range (Genevska-Hanke, 2017). The findings of this first investigation are now compared to those of a second investigation 5 years later, involving data collection in both countries with the result that after 17 years of immigration, no further attrition was attested and the production of overt subjects remained monolingual-like for the data collections in both language environments. The discussion focuses on the factors that are likely to explain these results. First, these show that attrition and language dominance are highly dependent on immediate language use context and change rapidly when the language environment is modified. Additionally, the data obtained after L1-reexposure illustrate that time scales involved in dominance shift or attrition are much shorter than previously thought. Second, the role of age of acquisition in attrition has repeatedly been acknowledged. The present study demonstrates that attrition of a highly entrenched L1 is a phenomenon affecting language processing only temporarily and that it is likely to regress quickly after reexposure or return to balanced L1-use. The discussion suggests that dominance shift and attrition probably involve similar mechanisms and are influenced by the same external factors, showing that both may be different steps of the same process.

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“…Ligšioliniuose lietuviškuose tyrimuose apie emigrantų šeimas iš esmės susitelkta į sėkmingą mažumos kalbos perdavimą ir jį laiduojančius veiksnius. Užsienio mokslinėse publikacijose nedarniosios dvikalbystės atvejai yra dokumentuoti (Okita 2002;Timofeeva, Heen Wold 2004;De Houwer 2007;Slavkov 2015;Karpava, Ringblom, Zabrodskaja 2018 ir kt. ), tačiau teksto autorei nežinomi specialiai šiai temai skirti sociolingvistiniai, iš etnografiniu metodu sukauptos medžiagos parašyti, nedarniosios dvikalbystės priežastis apibendrinantys darbai.…”

Section: įVadasunclassified

Unharmonious early bilingualism in inter-ethnic Lithuanian emigrant familie

Hilbig

2020

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The article seeks to investigate the main reasons that cause inharmonious early bilingualism in inter-ethnic Lithuanian emigrant families. The data consist of extracts from 25 semi-structured interviews with Lithuanian women and Facebook comments of such emigrant mothers. Firstly, the study identifies the reasons why some informants themselves do not speak Lithuanian in their families, which leads to their children not even being able to understand it. These reasons can be lack of knowledge about the nature of early simultaneous bilingualism with a minority language, weak or negative attitudes towards Lithuanian and / or Lithuania, urgent need to fully integrate, influence of non-Lithuanian speaking partners, dominance of the majority language over bilingual mothers, and children’s passive bilingualism or insufficient comprehension skills. On their part, children can be growing up passively bilingual because of the minority language input shortage, not enough possibilities and real need to practice it in their daily lives, and because mothers tolerate bilingual conversations with certain discourse strategies. Finally, this paper examines the factors determining underdeveloped or attriting competences in the minority language. Children might be able to participate in very simple colloquial conversations in Lithuanian but cannot express themselves more freely in it or on different topics. They lack higher quality and more various input, e.g. through books or films in the Lithuanian language. They protest against minority language classes, where they could have a chance to learn to read and write in the minority language and further develop their skills. The analysis has revealed a variety of different reasons and their complex combinations that contribute to inharmonious bilingualism with Lithuanian as a minority language. They are objective and subjective, primary and secondary, sociolinguistic, psychological, pedagogical, and maybe some other reasons. A crucial role is played by mothers’ negative emotions in the face of struggles and children’s resistance, which also negatively affects success in bilingual child-rearing.

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Language attrition and reactivation in the context of bilingual first language acquisition

Cited by 31 publications

References 50 publications

Bilingual mothers’ language choice in child-directed speech: continuity and change

Bilingual mothers’ language choice in child-directed speech: continuity and change

First Language Attrition and Dominance: Same Same or Different?

Unharmonious early bilingualism in inter-ethnic Lithuanian emigrant familie

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