Language Attrition

Contents 

List of figures page ix 

List of tables 

xi 

Preface 

xiii 

Abbreviations 

xviii 

1. Introduction 

1 

Part I: Linguistic aspects of language attrition 

9 

2. What is attrition? 

11 

3. Cross-linguistic influence and the mental lexicon 

18 

4. Attrition in the mental lexicon 

38 

5. Attrition and the structure of language 

47 

Part II: Extralinguistic aspects of language attrition 

69 

6. Personal background factors 

71 

7. The role of L1 input and output 

81 

8. Attitudes and identities 

96 

Part III: Conducting research on language attrition – 

preliminary considerations 

107 

9. The test populations: participant characteristics and 

acquisition 

109 

10. Types of linguistic knowledge 

125 

Part IV: Experimental designs for attrition research – the 

language attrition test battery 

137 

11. Lexical tasks 

141 

12. Grammaticality judgment tasks 

151 

vii13. Other grammatical tasks 

171 

14. Free speech 

186 

Part V: Coding and analysing the data 

197 

15. Transcribing and coding free speech: the CHILDES project 

199 

16. Coding and reporting experimental data 

208 

17. Interpreting your data: inferential statistics 

225 

18. Conclusion 

250 

Glossary 

254 

Notes 

259 

References 

263 

Index 

275