Verba mihi desunt. Elementi di "attrito linguistico" nella costruzione ovidiana della persona exulis

In my article I would like to discuss the role of English as a “backup” language as a result of language attrition phenomena. Usually, dominant language interference is described in connection to mother tongue attrition and is considered as one of its natural but negative outcomes. Less attention is paid to language attrition and interaction among second or foreign languages. First, I would like to describe language attrition, its main features and characteristics and factors that influence it and I would like to challenge the “use it or lose it” rule (Schmid, 2019). Attention will be paid to mother tongue attrition (Schmid, 2011) and second/foreign language attrition (Schmid and Mehotcheva, 2012). Furthermore, I would like to understand how L2 English interacts with L3 Czech in L1 Arabic speaker who has a scarce access to possibilities of using his second language – Czech. Examples of different language attrition and language contact or interaction phenomena (for example “To je unofficial čtvrť budovaný against the law“ etc.) will be depicted based on naturalistic, recorded data of a speaker who has acquired typologically interesting and very “different“ languages. Interference and code-switching of the languages involved will be discussed and compared to data already available in various linguistic contexts (i. e. Dewaele, 1998 and Selinker, Baumgartner-Cohen, 1995 in Murphy, 2003). Last but not least, the importance of holistic approach to multilingual mind and its importance for language learning, preservance, teaching and testing will be pointed out. Yates and Terraschke (2013) refer to the uniqueness of the situation, to the role of emotions connected to the language itself and to the role of the language in the family and the community when speaking about keeping our mother tongues. In this case study I would like to show that there should always and generally – not only in the case of using and keeping mother tongues – be a space for individual and highly variable approach to language learners and users and their linguistic trajectories (Pavlenko, 2005).

The dramatic increase in the number of exiles and refugees in the past 100 years has generated a substantial amount of literature written in a second language as well as a heightened sensibility towards the progressive loss of fluency in the mother tongue. Confronted by what modern linguistics has termed ‘first-language attrition’, the writings of numerous exilic translingual authors exhibit a deep sense of trauma which is often expressed through metaphors of illness and death. At the same time, most of these writers make a deliberate effort to preserve what is left from the mother tongue by attempting to increase their exposure to poems, dictionaries or native speakers of the ‘dying’ language. The present paper examines a range of attitudes towards translingualism and first language attrition through the testimonies of several exilic authors and thinkers from different countries (Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Hannah Arendt's interviews, Jorge Semprún's Quel beau dimanche! and Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez, and Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation, among others). Special attention will be paid to the historical frameworks that encourage most of their salvaging operations by infusing the mother tongue with categories of affect and kinship.

Long term bilingual immigrants often report that they perceive first language attrition after years of living in a second language surrounding. This paper focuses on the individual’s own perception concerning first language attrition and identity. It deals with questions such as: To what extent does living in another country and speaking another language influence one’s mother tongue? If individuals experience first language attrition, do they really ‘suffer’ from it? Is there any objective evidence for their supposed decline of language skills? Data from a study of attrition in German migrants in the Netherlands will be discussed, showing the close relation between language (decline) and identity as a result of interacting factors over the lifespan.

Instructed foreign language knowledge – that is, language skills acquired exclusively in the classroom without the benefit of any significant immersion experience – remains a vastly neglected area of studies on language learning in general and language attrition in particular. There is also little consideration of foreign language attrition and maintenance as a problem for policy or pedagogy.The present talk will give an overview of what is and what is not known about second language (L2) attrition at the present time. It will then present the results from a pilot project that will hopefully serve as the foundation for larger studies of instructed L2 attrition in future years.

Much research and effort has been devoted to how languages (both first and second) are acquired, but relatively little attention has been paid to language attrition—the gradual decline or loss of language knowledge and skills. This entry provides an overview of language attrition, focusing on different hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the phenomenon as well as other important variables that constitute the attrition context. Linguistic areas and skills most vulnerable to attrition are also addressed. The entry concludes by highlighting recent research developments and methodological issues that should be considered in future research.

Languages are at the centre of nationalistic discourses across South Asia since they have played a historically and politically significant role in defining nationhood and both uniting and dividing countries throughout the British Empire. Despite multilingualism and multiculturalism, and vast differences in individual access to, and command of, mother tongue, national and official languages, paradoxically a collective language is always considered as an important imagined marker of ‘national’ identity. It is this latter point I explore by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork amongst Bangladeshi youths from indigenous ethnic communities who are designated as ethnic minority groups in Bangladesh. Positioning the paper at the nexus of multilingual ecology, I thereby investigate how youths from the indigenous ethnic communities perceive themselves with reference to their mother tongue, national language, and foreign language, and what impact their relationships, their preferences, and use have on the maintenance and sustainability of their mother tongue in the multilingual ecology. A qualitative content analysis of the data demonstrates that it is only by taking the varying potential scopes of language into account that we can fully appreciate these complex Asian multilingual ecologies, where the mother tongues, indigenous ethnic languages, national languages, and English have specific historical, political, and sociocultural significances. The discursive claims of Bangladeshi ethnic youth participants indicate that the presence of the ‘mother-tongue’ and ‘national language’ in these contexts is ideologically infused, layered, value-laden, relational, and paradoxical at the microlevel – as these languages are practiced and nurtured by the linguistically minoritized subjects themselves. They negotiate their relationship with these languages, strictly keeping in consideration the existence of other languages and their social, cultural, economic significance in the multilingual ecology. It is via the paradoxical role of these languages in contexts that the paper aims to identify the socio-psychological reasons behind language loss in Bangladesh.

This study aimed to evaluate the post-graduation language status of secondary school students learning Turkish as a foreign language in Iraq and to determine the factors affecting the progress or deterioration in their language levels, if any. For this purpose, the desired language status of these people; they were evaluated according to gender, age groups and professions. Factors affecting the progress and decline in language levels were determined and listed according to the degree of impact. The research was conducted with the quantitative research method and the design of the study is a case study. Information was collected by semi-structured survey method, and descriptive scanning and relational scanning models were preferred among general scanning models in the study. The sample of the study consists of graduates who learned Turkish as a foreign language in schools in the city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq between 1997 and 2022. A total of 414 people, 196 women and 218 men, participated in the research. The current language status of the participants and the factors that caused the improvement and deterioration of their Turkish language skills were determined according to the determined variables and the obtained values are; it was tried to be analyzed with the help of figures, tables and graphs. As a result, it has been observed that students who learned Turkish as a foreign language in Iraq reached a successful language level after graduation and improved their language skills at a significant rate after graduation. There are almost no studies on the language status of students who have completed their foreign language education, graduated and started business life. This makes this study very important and it will be one of the first important studies and resources in this field. More research needs to be done on the language status of students after graduation. Keywords: Foreign language Turkish, language after graduation, foreign language levels, language attrition, language development.

Language learning

Straipsnyje analizuojama anglofoniskosios Kanados rasytojos Betty Quan drama Gimtoji kalba (Mother Tongue), siekiant panagrinėti kalbos ir tapatumo, siuo atveju motinos tapatumo santykį ir issiaiskinti, kaip motinos subjektyvumo tapsme dalyvauja, kokias funkcijas atlieka vaikų auginimo (mothering) kalba gyvenant motinai svetimoje kalbinėje aplinkoje. Pjesėje kuriamas motinos tapatumas analizuojamas pasitelkiant lycių studijų specialistės Irene Gedalof feministine migracijos teoriją ir psichoanalitines Julijos Borossa’os gimtosios kalbos bei Cathy Caruth traumos teorijas. Teigiama, kad motinos užsispyres kinų kalbos vartojimas anglų kalbos sąskaita yra teigiama praktika, padedanti issaugoti asmenybės vientisumą, taciau dėl asmeninės ir kultūrinės traumos virsta destruktyvia jėga, kliudancia tolesniam motinos subjektyvumo vystymuisi. Daroma isvada, kad sioje pjesėje atskleidžiamas svarbus issūkis užsienyje vaikus auginancioms motinoms – gebėjimas sukurti bendrą tapatumą su vaikais, jiems perduoti dalį savo kultūrinio ir kalbinio tapatumo, bet kartu susikurti naują migracinį daugiakalbį tapatumą, kuris būtų atviras vaikų gyvenamai kultūrai, priimtų ją, ismoktų jos kalbą, sugebėtų suvokti toje kultūroje gyvenancių vaikų poreikius ir juos patenkinti. The article explores maternal subjectivity of a migrant mother as portrayed in the play Mother Tongue by the Canadian playwright of Chinese origin Betty Quan. It argues that by reproducing home through embodied practices, such as speaking Cantonese to the exclusion of English to her children, the mother works against the dissolution of her identity, but due to the cultural and personal trauma, becomes fixated on that identity essentially belonging in the past and is only able to face the challenges of the present (such as acknowledging the needs of her growing children), when the set ways of family dynamics is disrupted. The development of her mother’s subjectivity is considered using theoretical models developed by gender and migration theorist Irene Gedalof and psychoanalyst Julia Borossa. Gedalof claims that the repetition of the same cultural rituals performed by migrant mothers is not an act of reproducing sameness, but rather a dynamic process that creates difference and produces rather than reproduces identities. Borossa argues that the mother tongue is always already lost to all humans. For her, becoming a fully formed subject involves accepting the loss of the childhood language and acquiescing to speaking a different language – be it a foreign language or the native tongue that has developed since childhood. It follows, that a fully developed migrant mother should be able to accept that she as a mother and her mother tongue can never coincide and resign to speaking a foreign language to her children whilst keeping her native tongue as memory-trace. In the case of the mother in Quan’s play, her fear of annihilation by her children’s voices in foreign English originates from her not having come to terms with the separation from her mother tongue, which is symbolically contained in her infantile fixation on and identification with the traumatic past together with the language of the past. However, the end of the play opens up a window of hope. In conclusion, the biggest challenge for a migrant mother in Mother Tongue is developing a common identity with her children who feel foreign to her. The play suggests that this can be achieved by passing on the mother’s cultural identity onto the children through ritualistic practices of which speaking the mother tongue is an important component, but also opening up to the children’s cultural difference by learning the language of their socialisation and the dominant culture thus establishing a more mature and empowered maternal subjectivity and capacity for more adequate mothering.

This study used co-citation analysis in CiteSpace to identify trends and patterns in international research on language attrition. The analysis was based on journal articles from the Web of Science Core Collection, covering 2010 to 2020. The research showed that international studies on language attrition increased significantly over the past decade. Additionally, the citation frequency of these studies has also grown substantially. The research also showed that international language attrition studies have primarily been distributed across multidisciplinary fields such as linguistics, psychology, and education. These studies also seem to be merging with disciplines like pathology and neurology. Another research finding was that topics related to language attrition covered four main areas: first language attrition, foreign language attrition, the factors influencing language attrition, and the linguistic areas impacted by language attrition. Additionally, this study evaluates the research trend of language attrition by analyzing burst keywords. The research concludes with a summary of current international studies on language attrition and offers insights into prospects in this field.

LANGUAGE REFERS TO LOSS OR ATTRITION of skill in one's native language (L1) or a second or foreign language (L2).1 The phenomenon can have both sociological and psychological forms. That is, language loss can be exhibited by a whole cultural or linguistic group or by an individual; it can be analyzed in terms of rate, sequence, linguistic components, or skill types. This article reviews studies on language loss in its individual rather than its group form. L1 loss is emphasized more than L2 loss. Focus is on research that has relevance to foreign language teaching practices. Language loss through aphasia, senile dementia, and physical illness is not the subject of this article, because experts have accomplished more comprehensive work on those topics than is possible to describe in a brief exposition.2 The discussion is organized as follows. The first section presents a review of studies in three categories: 1) research on the optimal age for foreign language learning, on the assumption that such research has implications for the study of language loss; 2) studies on cognitive aspects of language loss; and 3) investigations concerning attitudes toward language learning, maintenance, and loss. In the second section are limitations of currently available research and suggestions for improvement. The third section describes future research needs. Implications fdr foreign language teaching are found in the final section.

This article contains a report of a case study on language shift and language loss in three generations of a Dutch immigrant family in New Zealand carried out in 1990/1991 (Folmer 1991). Language shift refers to the shift from Dutch to English and language loss to the loss of the mother tongue Dutch. In addition to language shift and loss, the personal linguistic history of the subjects and their (language) attitudes were examined; these topics are only discussed indirectly in this article. One first generation member, five members of the second generation and two third generation children took part in the investigation. The instruments used were an analysis of letters, an interview, a domain questionnaire, an editing test and a correction test. It was found that language shift increases with each generation. The factors education, exogamy, (language) attitudes and age also proved to be important. Furthermore, the type of domain or activity made a difference. In both the first and the second generation the degree of language loss in Dutch was rather low. Some trends in the loss process were established and certain word classes turned out to be more problematic than others.

In the vast literature on language attrition, studies on the role of extralinguistic factors in language retention, particularly concerning foreign language (FL) skills acquired in formal instructional contexts, are scarce. We address this issue by focusing on the impact of the frequency of FL use, both extramural and in the classroom, and motivation on the retention of written production skills. FL performance of Greek learners of French (N = 19) was assessed longitudinally (at the end of the instructional period and 12 months later) across two tasks: a C-test and a written narrative task. Findings generally showed a positive influence of language use and motivation on FL retention, but their impact varied across the tasks. In the C-test, results revealed a significant beneficial effect of extramural language use for communication purposes and motivation on participants’ general linguistic skills, while lexical diversity in the written narrative task was positively influenced by the learners’ personal involvement when using French as well as oral FL use in the classroom. Findings allow us to deepen insights from former studies and suggest that FL attrition research should favour longitudinal approaches in order to shed light on the complex interactions between extralinguistic factors in FL retention.

by Wolfgang Butzkamm and John A W Caldwell narr studienbucher 2009 978-3-8233-6492-4 The question of whether the mother tongue (MT) should be allowed in foreign language (FL) teaching has a long history in methodology debates. It has often been argued that the MT should definitely be avoided as it has a detrimental effect on learning a foreign language. Wolfgang Butzkamm and John Caldwell, however, claim not only that the monolingual approach has a weak basis in theory (even though they consider it a comprehensible reaction to the outcomes of the grammar-translation method), but also that it is better to work with the MT as a ‘natural tendency’ in FL teaching. To support their inclination towards a more relaxed approach to MT use, they scrutinise the reality of what they call the ‘MT taboo’, formulate a theory of MT use in the FL classroom and exemplify their insights through practical teaching techniques. It is the combination of theory and practice that makes the book much more than a ‘how to use the MT in FL teaching’ guide. The book discusses the importance of ‘immersion’ for MT acquisition, which means that a child is exposed to a huge amount of language, first learning chunks of language for communicative purposes and much later learning to break them down into parts. Since it is impractical to reproduce this natural process of acquiring a language in the FL classroom because of restrictions on the time available and, therefore, the exposure to the target language, FL teaching has to provide a focus on both meaning and structure. A prudent use of MT here helps make life easier for teachers and learners: ‘sandwiching’, mirroring and contrasting or literal translation, as the authors show, can be embedded in pattern drills in grammar teaching, dialogue work and drama. Moreover, it can increase the input of authentic material in the form of, for example, bilingual readers or DVDs with subtitles. A controlled use of the MT in the FL classroom also allows access to the understanding of language concepts that each learner has, even if those concepts are different in the MT and the FL. For example, when a teacher wants to show how continuous tenses are formed to learners whose own language has no continuous tenses, translation is a better way to express finer shades of meaning than an explanation or paraphrase in the target language. When the FL can be integrated into existing knowledge (ie the MT), the FL is ‘deforeignised’ and confidence is built up in the learner. In other words, the MT can be useful in promoting understanding of both form and meaning (which use of the FL alone often fails to do). Real understanding and control are key words in this book, and it is argued that fashionable methods of communicative language teaching which strictly exclude the MT often cause a learning situation in which students do not really understand what they are saying (but merely parrot phrases for no communicative reason) and, as a result, skills learning is impeded. The authors put their case convincingly, supporting their arguments with insights into the mechanisms used by children growing up bilingually: mixing their languages is a tactic that helps them learn. A separate chapter discusses ‘translation as a fifth skill’ with the help of some intellectually demanding (and therefore enjoyable) classroom activities, which, not least, help develop MT competence. The authors do admit that there are many situations where monolingualism is preferable, especially for classroom management, and claim that a controlled use of the MT should actually increase the time available for using the FL. The book is aimed particularly at student teachers, having study questions and tasks at the end of each chapter as well as many practical ideas, but I am sure that experienced teachers will also benefit from it. A benchmark in its field, the book is a must for all those who want to contribute to the debate over the pros and cons of using the MT in FL teaching.

The purpose of this study has been an investigation of language awareness in two groups of third or additional language (term introduced by de Angelis, Third or Additional Language Acquisition, 2007) learners undergoing language attrition. The research questions concerned the students’ evaluation of their language attrition in terms of structures, lexical items and language skills, their awareness of cross-linguistic interaction, as well as elements that caused them particular difficulty during the language tasks and the extent to which the problems were caused by language attrition (as evaluated by the students themselves). This chapter is based on two studies, one carried out with nine students of Swedish as L4 at the German Philology department, about 1 year after the end of the 3-year Swedish course, and one carried out with 42 students of Portuguese Philology, investigating their attrition of Portuguese over the summer holidays. In general, the Portuguese philology students performed much better than the Swedish language learners, not only because the period of attrition was shorter, but also because they were highly motivated to learn Portuguese and used more conscious reflection in learning the language. Both groups observed interference into the target language, as well as a decrease in their language proficiency. It can be concluded that, despite considerable language learning experience, third or additional language learners’ language awareness cannot be taken for granted, as it is combined with other factors, such as motivation, proficiency in the target language and the learners’ language needs.KeywordsTarget LanguageLanguage TaskAdditional LanguageSwedish LanguageForeign Language LearningThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.