First Language Attrition Seminar Series

This series of seminars will focus on First Language Attrition (FLA) - the process by which the first language of a speaker who uses another language predominantly (e.g. migrants) becomes compromised and shows signs of crosslinguistic interference, such as word-finding difficulties, a foreign accent, or lexical or grammatical errors. Personal accounts of such experiences abound and spark great interest online, e.g. a video recorded by a Canadian in Japan who describes 'forgetting her English' which had more than 70,000 views on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeBHl1PbhDQ).

FLA is becoming an increasingly important subtopic in the wider research area of bilingual and multilingual development, and it is being recognised that investigations of changes in the first language of bilinguals have as much to contribute to our understanding of the human language ability as the study of second language acquisition (SLA). In addition, migrants often feel in need of good information regarding the process of first language attrition and how it may impact, for example, on their personal ties with their country of origin, their sense of identity, or the choices they make with respect to the language in which they bring up their children. For speakers who are professional language users (foreign language teachers, interpreters, tour guides etc.), the problem is particularly important, since an erosion of their first language proficiency may threaten their professional existence. It is also increasingly recognised that the differential use of all of a speaker's languages, in particular the potentially attrited native language, in treatments such as psychotherapy or speech/language pathology may facilitate recovery from conditions as diverse as depression and aphasia. That notwithstanding, studies on SLA still vastly outnumber those on FLA which remains a somewhat marginal topic of investigation.

An international research network led by the PI in collaboration with some of the co-applicants and comprising a number of meetings, conferences, and panels at international conferences between 2002 and 2011 has helped raise the visibility of the field considerably. This seminar series will build on these efforts to expand the focus of attrition studies and explore overlaps and opportunities for collaboration and co-operation with neighbouring fields, in order to achieve greater insights into some fundamental questions about the human language faculty and, in particular, the nature of linguistic development across the lifespan. As in the previous meetings, there will be a focus on providing support and advice to PhD and early career researchers in particular through bringing them in contact with experienced researchers in the area and providing a platform for presenting and discussing their work and any problems or questions that they might have with the senior experts in the field.

The potential beneficiaries include migrants, policy makers, language businesses, educators, parents, media, interest groups amongst others.

Stories on the benefits of acquiring a second language feature regularly in the media, whether it be about migrants arriving in the UK and other European countries with poor skills in the host language, the importance of the knowledge of foreign languages for a country's economic development or renewed policies for language teaching in schools. The fact that acquiring new languages also has ramifications for the existing ones - first language attrition (FLA) - is largely ignored. Individuals beginning to learn a second language can draw upon a wealth of information and resources. For example, an English speaker wishing to acquaint herself with Modern Greek (e.g. prior to a vacation) has a host of options available - she can buy primers and coursebooks, follow classes in the real world or online, etc. She would also, in all probability, not expect to become native-like within a few weeks, and realize early on the particular difficulties which that language posed for speakers with her own linguistic background. Migrants who invest a great deal of effort in becoming fluent in their second language (L2) and (largely) cease using their first language (L1) have all of these resources available for the former process, but are left to their own devices when it comes to the latter. This often results in feelings of insecurity, shock and alienation when they begin to experience problems in their native language, which they had not expected to happen. Such problems can pose a threat to personal identity and ties with the home country, and they may furthermore endanger the career of language professionals, such as interpreters or language teachers.

A particular problem in relation to this process of first language attrition lies in the fact that the second generation of migrants is typically not fully successful in acquiring their parents' language, and they often also experience some degree of problem with the environmental language. It has been demonstrated that a crucial prerequisite for linguistic development in subsequent languages is that one language be fully acquired. For example, the degree of linguistic development and sophistication in the home language at the time that a child first begins to attend school is a strong predictor of eventual mastery of the environmental language and of academic performance. However, while there is a great deal of research on heritage language skills in the second generation, there is very little work attempting to relate the quality of the input - ie., the degree of attrition experienced in the parent generation - to the complexity and sophistication of the linguistic system that is eventually acquired.

Integrating the different scientific approaches to these phenomena and making the findings and conclusions available to a wider audience thus has the potential of providing support and advice to an increasing segment of the population, as well as to educators and policy-makers. It may help question the judgment underlying decisions to abolish government funding for teaching migrants' first languages in schools (as happened in the Netherlands in 2004), and help school teachers come to a more valid assessment, expectation and encouragement of their bilingual pupils.