Lexical Attrition Research Articles

Vocabulary forgetting, L1 and L2 memory representations and years of english disuse: investigating the possible relations

This article aims to investigate the loss of vocabulary after years of English disuse among Iranian teachers. Specifically, it strives to find the effect of period of English disuse on lexical attrition of graduated teachers, and also the cut-of point for lexical attrition in relation to years of English disuse. In addition, it tries to examine if after years of English disuse, teachers will perform better in Persian to English translation or English to Persian translation. 210 teachers participated in the study. Two translation tasks were employed for eliciting the data. The findings of the study revealed that Iranian teachers forget more than 50% of their word knowledge after 2 years and 90% of this knowledge will fade after 8 years. Also, it was found that after years of English disuse, English to Persian translation attrition was less than attrition in Persian to English translation. Some implications would be suggested for decreasing the degree of attrition among Iranian teachers. Keywords: Attrition, language disuse, L1, Iranian teachers, L2.

Lexical Attrition of General and Special English Words after Years of Non-Exposure: The Case of Iranian Teachers

This study sought to investigate the rate of attrition in general and special vocabulary in and out of context. Participants of the study were 210 male Persian literature teachers with different years of non-exposure to English (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 &10) after graduating from university. They were selected through purposive sampling from among 1000 Persian literature teachers from three provinces, namely Esfahan, Fars and Yasuj. Their age ranged between 25 and 35. The instrument included one translation task. The task consisted of 20 items of general words and 20 items of special words which were tested in and out of context.Results indicated that the rate of attrition increased gradually as the years of non-exposure to English increased. Also, it was found that the rate of attrition in special and contextualized lexicon is respectively less than general and de-contextualized lexicon.

Lexical attrition in younger and older bilingual adults

Healthy monolingual older adults experience changes in their lexical abilities. Bilingual individuals immersed in an environment in which their second language is dominant experience lexical changes, or attrition, in their first language. Changes in lexical skills in the first language of older individuals who are bilinguals, therefore, can be attributed to the typical processes accompanying older age, the typical processes accompanying first‐language attrition in bilingual contexts, or both. The challenge, then, in understanding how lexical skills change in bilingual older individuals, lies in dissociating these processes. This paper addresses the difficulty of teasing apart the effects of ageing and attrition in older bilinguals and proposes some solutions. It presents preliminary results from a study of lexical processing in bilingual younger and older individuals. Processing differences were found for the older bilingual participants in their first language (L1), but not in their second language (L2). It is concluded that the lexical behaviour found for older bilinguals in this study can be attributed to L1 attrition and not to processes of ageing. These findings are discussed in the context of previous reports concerning changes in lexical skills associated with typical ageing and those associated with bilingual L1 attrition.

First-language decline in healthy aging: implications for attrition in bilingualism

Studies of language attrition have focused on the decline observed in individuals' first-language (L1) or second language (L2) in the context of bilingualism. L1 decline has also been extensively studied in monolingual adults in the context of healthy aging. One language domain that has been found to decline with age is lexical retrieval. This paper focuses on longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of healthy aging, which show that older adults, as compared to younger adults, demonstrate greater difficulty in performing naming tasks as well as accelerated decline in performance over time. Relevant findings of age-related decline in word retrieval and theories that have been proposed to account for it are summarized and their relations to the patterns and theories of lexical attrition reported for bilingual speakers are discussed. It is concluded that despite fundamental differences between these two circumstances of attrition, applying methods and theories from one study area to the other can be beneficial for understanding processes of language attrition.

Language Attrition, Language Shift and Ethnolinguistic Vitality of Turkish in Australia

This paper presents the findings of research investigating first-language attrition of Turkish speakers in Australia and the role of subjective ethnolinguistic vitality perceptions in that process. It examines the relationship between societal factors and individuals' perception of the language contact situation as reflected in their speech behaviour. For the linguistic dimension of the study, a number of lexical and syntactic tests along with self-rating scales were administered to 40 Turkish-Australians in Sydney and 40 reference-group informants in Turkey. For the social psychological dimension of the study, data were gathered by utilising the concept of ethnolinguistic vitality and its accompanying instrument, the subjective vitality questionnaire (SVQ). The SVQ data indicate low vitality perceptions among Turkish immigrants. Also, by means of a language use-choice questionnaire (LUCQ), data were elicited on language use and attitudes of the informants. The comparative results between Turkish immigrants in Sydney and Turkish speakers in Turkey indicate lexical and syntactic attrition among Turkish immigrants.

Greek forms of address from Herodotus to Lucian by Eleanor Dickey (review)

644LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 3 (1998) (1) No—speak—Spanish. Go—airport ...... airplanes—zoom-zoom-zoom. Quick. You—get—me—airport—me—pay—big bucks. Kapeesh? The radical grammatical simplification and lexical attrition typical of pidgins is described, as is the depidginization of creóles. The chapter concludes with an exemplification of the creóle features of African American Vernacular English. Ch. 15 (446-52) examines factors leading to language death and comments on measures that can be taken to aid in the preservation of endangered languages. Part VI, 'Language relationship', begins with Ch. 16 (455-84) on the comparative method. H & J emphasize the necessity ofestablishing systematic phonological correspondences, perhaps supplemented by shared morphological aberrancies, to demonstrate genetic relationship. They provide the salutary warning that a data sample of insufficient size, along with chance similarities and convergence effects, can markedly impact the accuracy of one's results and therefore must be carefully accounted for. Though most data are drawn from the Indo-European family in the volume, this chapter concludes with a consideration of the progress made in the historical and comparative linguistics of a number of other language families. Ch. 17 (485-506) considers long distance comparison and the significant danger presented by chance similarities and takes pains to explain the problems of mass comparison. Ch. 18 (507-35) reveals how historical linguistic evidence can be employed to cast light on problems of (pre)history by employing the example of the Tasaday of the Philippines. H & J provide a balanced account of the results of linguistic paleontology of proto-Indo-European and assess the realism of our reconstructions. Given the intended audience, H & J avoid notes of any kind but provide an annotated list of suggested readings (536-54) at the end of the volume along with extensive references (557-84) and indices oflanguages (585-92) and subjects and names (593-602). As a textbook, the volume would be ideal for a beginning class, especially one composed of a significant number of students not majoring in linguistics. The instructor, however, would have to supply his or her own exercises and a certain amount of supplementary material since depth of discussion is sometimes sacrificed for breadth of content (again, understandable given the intended readership). This is a volume of great merit. REFERENCES Durie, Mark, and Malcolm Ross (eds.) 1996. The comparative method reviewed: Regularity and irregularity in language change. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klein, Jared S. 1992a. On the idiomatic nature of the Gothic New Testament: A comparative study of prepositional usage in Gothic and New Testament Greek. Transactions of the Philological Society 90.1-80. -----. 1992b. On the independence ofGothic syntax. I. Interrogativity, complex sentence types, tense, mood, and diathesis. Journal of Indo-European Studies 20.339-79. Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19.273-309. -----. 1994. Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Department of English Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112 [eska@vtaix.cc.vt.edu] Greek forms of address from Herodotus to Lucian. By Eleanor Dickey. (Oxford classical monographs.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xxi, 336. Cloth $75.00. Reviewed by Joshua T. Katz, Harvard University Eleanor Dickey's monograph is one of the most impressive books I have ever read. Though a detailed account of forms of address in Ancient Greek can hardly qualify as light reading, I found it impossible to put down and recommend it enthusiastically to Hellenists (the book's REVIEWS645 main audience) and even to linguists with little or no acquaintance with Greek. It is dangerous to predict such things, but I have little doubt that D's work, based on her University of Oxford doctoral dissertation, will become a classic in the field of classical studies. Less clear is whether it will have its just impact on linguistics; I hope with this review to encourage sociolinguists in particular to pay attention to D's exemplary method and interesting conclusions. While it is not really possible for someone unacquainted with Greek to read the book in its entirety, Chs. 1, 2, and 6 are largely free of Greek forms and will give browsers an idea of D's ambitious undertaking...

Code‐switching as indexical of native language lexical deficiency in Mauritania

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between French instruction and the phenomena of discontinued lexical development, lexical attrition, and lexical deficiency in the speech of Mauritanian speakers of Hassania, Pulaar, Soninke, and Wolof, who have been educated in French for at least twelve years, but who have received no formal instruction in their own native language. The population for the study included college and secondary school students, educators, school administrators, workers, civil‐servants and private business individuals. The research questions sought to find out whether Mauritanians code‐switch, what relationship exists between code‐switching and native language fluency, what factors influence code‐switching, and whether the diglossic situation between Hassania and Arabic influences the frequency of Hassania‐French mixing among Hassania speakers. The study also investigated the attitudes of Mauritanians towards bilingualism, and towards instruction in the ...

Longitudinal L2-attrition versus L2-acquisition, in three Turkish children- empirical findings

The attrition of German in two Turkish girls (seven and nine years old), previously resident in Germany, was observed in Turkey. The attrition was compared to the L2-acquisition of German of a Turkish boy aged 11. Attrition did not set in immediately. In the second stage, after six months, slower speech, hesitation and free morpheme code-switching to Turkish due to lexical attrition, particularly in verbs, indicated its onset. Basic grammatic al categories were involved in the third stage. Bound morpheme code- switching became the predominant pattern. Basic syntactic patterns of German were retained longest. Attrition was largely a mirror-image of acquisition. Simplification, overgeneralization and over-regularization were strikingly similar in both sets of data. Code-switching turned out to be developmentally systematic, and even 'grammaticalized' in the final stages.