International Journal of Bilingualism

The present paper will present an overview of the state of the art in language attrition research, attempting to provide an integrated picture of the attrition process in the light of Dynamic Systems Theory. Recent findings suggest that a fully developed L1 system is a powerful attractor state, as defined by Dynamic Systems Theory. Once this state has been attained, L2 influence or activation problems may cause small temporary shifts to the overall system, but it will generally settle back to its original state. Such a view could explain the dramatic differences observed between the L1 knowledge of pre- and post-puberty migrants. While speakers who have attained school age, but not puberty, will generally be able to use most grammatical features of their L1 in a target-like way, this knowledge may not yet have ‘settled’ into the mature attractor state, and therefore remain vulnerable to attrition.

The present study comprises a phonetic analysis of the lateral phoneme /l/ in the first (L1) and second language (L2) of 10 late German–English bilinguals. The primary objective of the study was to compare the predictive power of dynamic systems theory with that of maturational constraints through a phonetic investigation of L1 attrition in the lateral phoneme /l/ of the late bilinguals.

The results revealed L1 attrition in the lateral phoneme /l/, as well as a high degree of interpersonal and intrapersonal variation. These patterns are discussed in relation to dynamic systems theory and maturational constraints. Moreover, the degree of permanency of L1 attrition is discussed in relation to methodological considerations in studies on L1 attrition. It is proposed that maturational constraints are insufficient in explaining the results and that bilingual language development can be more adequately explained through dynamic systems theory, which explicitly incorporates a multitude of predictor variables across the lifespan, in addition to age constraints.

This paper provides a dynamic perspective on the linguistic development of adult bilinguals in an L2 environment, and an empirical test for the principles formulated within a dynamic systems approach to L1 attrition. It presents a qualitative analysis of the personal narratives of the post-migratory linguistic development of 27 adult German–English bilinguals residing in Ireland, with particular focus on two participants’ stories. Participants responded to a comprehensive sociolinguistic questionnaire, providing self-ratings of current and past language proficiency in all their languages, and reflecting on the processes of and factors impacting on L2 acquisition and L1 attrition in the L2 environment. These data are complemented by proficiency data elicited with a test battery in L1 German and L2 English. Analyses revealed that most participants have succeeded both in acquiring English to a high level, and in maintaining German. However, other L2s as a rule show a pattern of decline. The results are discussed with recourse to dynamic conceptions of multilingual development.

The factor attitude is generally considered to be among the most influential for first language (L1) attrition. Nevertheless, empirical validations have proven difficult to establish. While some studies could not find clear links between measures of attitude and L1 attrition (Hulsen, 2000; Yağmur, 1997), others showed that attitudes generated from exceptional life events strongly influenced attrition (Schmid, 2002) and that pragmatic vs. ideological motivation to emigrate and ensuing attitudes were clearly linked to L1 attrition (Ben-Rafael & Schmid, 2007). A closer examination of these studies yields a noteworthy pattern: those studies that relied on questionnaires (Hulsen, 2000, Yağmur, 1997) seemed to find no straight correlations between attitude and L1 performance, while the studies that used interviews (Ben-Rafael & Schmid, 2007; Schmid, 2002) established a clearer link between the two. The present study explores the impact of attitude – as measured through both questionnaires and interviews – on L1 attrition and second language (L2) proficiency. The quantitative analysis revealed partially significant results, thus suggesting that the factor attitude would have a limited impact on L1 attrition. Individual qualitative analyses, on the other hand, revealed important links between attitudes and the migrants’ language proficiency profiles. The article argues for a combination of methodological approaches in the study of L1 attrition and underlines the idea that individual-level analyses are well suited to capture the non-linearity of attitude and its impact on L1 attrition. These conclusions fit well with a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective in relation to the constant flux of attitude perceptions and their unpredictable role in attrition (de Bot, Lowie & Verspoor, 2007).

How stable or how permeable to attrition are a multilingual’s first and second languages during life periods characterized by dynamic changes in language-use frequencies? This longitudinal study sheds some light on this issue by investigating changing patterns in a multilingual speaker’s tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. Over a period of 10 years, the multilingual recorded more than 100 TOT states, together with 400 non-target word associations, as they occurred with words from the speaker’s five languages (L1 German, L2 Russian, L3 English, L4 Spanish, and L5 Portuguese). During the period, the L1 was consistently used less than the L3 and L4, providing a setting in which L1 attrition might occur. Data were analyzed with respect to the changing frequencies of TOT state occurrence in the different languages, the contribution of each language to the word associations generated during word search, the typological relatedness of targets and associates, and the linguistic context of initial learning of each language. Rates of TOT states and percentages of cross-language word associations and within-language word associations fluctuated in response to dynamic patterns of language use and maintenance, demonstrating the value of data on word-retrieval failure for studies of language attrition. The data reveal that the speaker’s L1 appeared to gain stability after an early period suggestive of attrition, despite low frequency of use overall. This finding supports the view that the L1 is exceptional, highly resistant to attrition, but also suggests that temporary impairment of L1 can occur when a multilingual speaker’s overall set of interacting language systems comes out of balance.