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You win some, you lose some: Comprehension and event-related potential evidence for L1 attrition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2019

David Miller Open the ORCID record for David Miller [Opens in a new window]  and
Jason Rothman
David Miller*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
Jason Rothman
Affiliation:
UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Universidad Nebrija
*
Address for correspondence: David Miller, E-mail: millerdt@uic.edu
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Abstract

We examine first language (L1) attrition among 30 L1 Spanish – L2 English speakers living in the United Kingdom. We also tested 30 recently-arrived Spaniards to the UK as a baseline. We present several key findings: 1) attrition fluctuates over time and does not affect all individuals equally; 2) entropy can explain said fluctuation of attritional affects over time such that while length of residence and age of arrival may affect the depth of attrition, how often one is exposed to her native language, how often she uses it and for how long each day, who her friends are, and to which types of input she is regularly exposed, seemingly aid in the maintenance or loss of linguistic knowledge; 3) though offline scalar interpretations among bilinguals were predicted by canonical sociolinguistic variables, the online data revealed an overall insensitivity to pragmatic violations. Thus, offline and online methods combine to be more explanatory regarding the comprehension and processing of implicature generating quantifiers.

Keywords

language attritionscalar implicaturessemantic-pragmaticsevent-related potentials
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 23 , Special Issue 4: Interpreting: A window into bilingual processing , August 2020 , pp. 869 - 883
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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