An introduction to the phenomenon of first language attrition with interactive materials, literature findings and useful resources for students and researchers. This is an Open Educational Resource (OER) co-created by Roberta Spelorzi and Mattia Zingaretti, PhD Researchers at the University of Edinburgh. This OER is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing viewers to download, use and make changes to the materials, providing attribution to the authors and distributing the content under the same license as the original.

1. The Effects of Two Languages in One Mind:
First Language Attrition
Roberta Spelorzi and Mattia Zingaretti
PhD Researchers in Linguistics and English Language
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

2. Outline
o What is first language attrition?
• Accounts of attrition in real life
• Definition of attrition over time
o Attrition timeline
• Lexical attrition
• Attrition of ‘interface’ structures
• Phonetics and phonological attrition
o Resources
• Key research
• Language questionnaire and proficiency tests
• Experimental materials

3. What is
first
language
attrition?
When you speak a second language (L2) and your
first language (L1) starts changing...
Video examples [accessed May 31 2021]:
• International students’ experiences:
https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=y8Bz9GnLalo
• Expats’ experiences:
https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=Vc4Nl2gk6ow
Accounts of attrition
in real life

4. What is
first
language
attrition?
Blog examples [accessed May 31 2021]:
• Attrition resulting from a year abroad:
https://forwardthinking.ppls.ed.ac.uk/2019/05/28
/lost-for-words-in-your-native-language /
• Attrition resulting from trauma:
https://getpocket.com /explore /item /can-you-lose-
your-native-language?utm_source=pocket-newtab-
global-en-GB
Accounts of attrition
in real life

5. Attrition as Loss
• Initial research on L1 attrition found changes in
underlying structural knowledge of narrow
language domains due to intensive L2 use (e.g.
syntax and morphology; cf. Schmid et al. 2004)
• However, such research looked at very specific
populations (e.g. long-term migrants) and
features (i.e. emigration from the L1 country
for more than 3 decades and low L1 literacy)
What is
first
language
attrition?
Definition of
attrition over time

6. Attrition as Temporary Changes
• Nowadays, the scenario is different with L1
maintenance made easier by wider access to
media in the L1 and easiness of movement
between the L1 and L2 countries
• More recent research thus looks at attrition as
temporary changes resulting from the effortful
juggling of two languages in one mind (e.g.
Linck et al. 2009; Chamorro et al. 2016)1
What is
first
language
attrition?
Definition of
attrition over time
1For a thorough discussion on resource allocation, cognitive
load, and inhibitory control, see Sorace (2011, 2014, 2016)

7. Attrition
timeline*
• Shortly after the L2 learning process begins,
different L1 domains seem to be affected
by attrition at different points in time:
Lexical
attrition
Attrition of
‘interface’
structures
Phonetic &
phonological
attrition
*NB: This is a tentative timeline as more
research is needed to pinpoint exactly
the time of occurrence of L1 changes in
very early stages of L2 learning

8. Lexical attrition
• 3 months in an L2 environment are
sufficient to slow down word
retrieval in the L1 (Linck et al. 2009)
• After 3 months in Spain, (US)
English learners of Spanish had more
difficulties retrieving words in L1
English than students in a classroom
environment
Figure 1. Results for category fluency task (both groups)

9. • Immersed learners also showed no
sensitivity to lexical-neighbour
distractors in a translation-
recognition task, and were mostly
sensitive to semantic interference
• NB: Scores were restored shortly
after returning to the L1
environment!
Figure 2. Degree of lexical and semantic interference
Table 1. Three Critical distractors for the word cara (‘face’)
Lexical attrition

10. Attrition of
‘interface’
structures
• Changes in the L1 are also found in structures
which allow ‘optionality’ (cf. Sorace 2005) & at the
‘interface’ of grammar and context (‘Interface
Hypothesis’; cf. Sorace and Filiaci 2006)2
• E.g. sentences with pronouns, i.e (1a) and (1b)3
below, although structurally similar, are interpreted
differently in different languages:
(1) a. Il portiere saluta il postinoi mentre luii apre la porta.
b. The porteri greets the postman while hei opens the door.
3Adapted from Tsimpli et al. 2004
2Although some structures seem to be more prone to attrition than
others (‘selectivity’ of attrition; cf. Chamorro et al. 2016)

11. Attrition of
‘interface’
structures
• ‘Null subject’ languages (e.g. Italian) allow the
omission of pronouns (i.e. ‘lui’) when referring to the
subject of the main clause (i.e. ‘il portiere’) – instead
explicit (‘overt’) pronouns refer to a different referent
(i.e. ‘il postino’)4
• ‘Non-null subject’ languages (i.e. English) require the
use of overt pronouns, always interpreted as referring
to the subject of the main clause (i.e. ‘the porter’)
• Highly proficient bilinguals’ interpretation of L1
sentences can be susceptible to the preferred
resolution in the L2 – e.g. with Italian ‘attriters’
interpreting pronouns in (1a) as referring to the
subject (‘il portiere’) rather than the object
4See Carminati’s (2002) Position of Antecedent Strategy (PAS)

12. Attrition of
‘interface’
structures
• The overextension of overt subject pronouns is
found even more in L2 acquisition studies (cf.
Sorace and Filiaci 2006; Belletti, Bennati and
Sorace 2007), where near-native speakers of
Italian produce and accept pronouns in (2b) when
monolinguals would produce (2c):
(2) a. Perché Giovanna non è venuta?
‘Why didn’t Giovanna come?’
b. Perché lei non ha trovato un taxi.
c. Perché _ non ha trovato un taxi.
‘Because she couldn’t find a taxi.’

13. Phonetic &
phonological
attrition
• Studies on phonetic and phonological
attrition are scarce
• The earliest study is Flege’s (1987) on
voice onset time (VOT)5 in French
and English: an increase in L2
experience is found to trigger
bidirectional influence in the
production of bilingual speech sounds
5VOT: the time between the release of a stop consonant and the
onset of vibration of the vocal cords)

14. Phonetic &
phonological
attrition
• Major (1992) examines VOT in the L1 and
L2 of five speakers of Brazilian Portuguese
who are long-term residents in the US:
mutual interactions of the L1 and the
L2 are found to affect L2 phonetics
• Phonological changes are reported in two
studies to date, with intonation being
subject to bi-directional interference, from
the L1 to the L2 and, vice-versa, from the
L2 to the L1 (cf. Mennen 2004; de Leeuw
et al. 2012)

15. Resources
One of the earliest collection of works
o Seliger, H. W., & Vago, R. M. (Eds.).
(1991). First language attrition. Cambridge
University Press.
A comprehensive research overview
o M. S. Schmid (2016). Language attrition:
timeline. Language Teaching, 49(2), 186–312.
The latest handbook
o Schmid, M., & Köpke, B. (Eds.). (2019).
Oxford handbooks in linguistics. The Oxford
handbook of language attrition. (M. Cherciov,
T. Karayayla, M. Keijzer, E. De Leeuw, T. H.
Mehotcheva, S. Montrul & M. Polinsky,
Collaborators). Oxford University Press.
Key research

16. Resources
A useful language background questionnaire
o Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H. K., and
Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language
Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-
Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and
multilinguals. Journal of speech, language, and
hearing research, 50(4), 940-967.
Available at:
https://bilingualism.soc.northwestern.edu /wp-
content /uploads /2012/02/MarianBlumenfeldKausha
nskaya.pdf
Language
questionnaire &
proficiency tests

17. Resources
Proficiency tests (English, German & Dutch)
o Lemhöfer, K., & Broersma, M. (2012).
Introducing LexTALE: A quick and valid Lexical
Test for Advanced Learners of English. Behavior
Research Methods, 44, 325-343.
Available at:
http://www.lextale.com /takethetest.html
o Versions in other languages are also available
(i.e. Amenta, Simona & Badan, Linda &
Brysbaert, Marc. (2020). LexITA: A Quick and
Reliable Assessment Tool for Italian L2 Receptive
Vocabulary Size. Applied Linguistics, 42)
Language
questionnaire &
proficiency tests

18. Resources
Research materials
o The following website (put together by
Prof. Monika Schmid) contains a collection
of experimental materials usually employed
by researchers in language attrition:
https://languageattrition.org /resources-
for-researchers /
Experimental
materials

19. References
• Amenta, S., Badan, L. and Brysbaert, M. (2020). LexITA: A Quick and Reliable
Assessment Tool for Italian L2 Receptive Vocabulary Size. Applied Linguistics, 42.
• Carminati, M. N. (2002). The processing of Italian subject pronouns. University of
Massachusetts Amherst.
• Chamorro, G., Sorace, A. and Sturt, P. (2016). What is the source of L1 attrition? The
effect of recent L1 re-exposure on Spanish speakers under L1 attrition. Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 19(3), 520-532.
• de Leeuw, E., Mennen I. and Scobbie J. M. (2012). Singing a different tune in your
native language: first language attrition of prosody. International Journal of
Bilingualism, 16 (1), pp. 1-116.
• Flege, J. (1987) The production of “new” and “similar” phrases in a foreign language:
Evidence for the effect of equivalence classification. Journal of Phonetics, 15(1).

20. References
• Lemhöfer, K., and Broersma, M. (2012). Introducing LexTALE: A quick and valid Lexical
Test for Advanced Learners of English. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 325-343
• Linck, J. A., Kroll, J. F., and Sunderman, G. (2009). Losing access to the native
language while immersed in a second language: Evidence for the role of inhibition in
second-language learning. Psychological science, 20(12), 1507-1515.
• Major, R.C. (1992). Losing English as a first language. Modern Language Journal, 76,
190-208
• Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H. K., and Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language Experience
and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and
multilinguals. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research, 50(4), 940-967.
• Mennen, I. (2004). Bi-directional interference in the intonation of Dutch speakers of
Greek. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 543-563.

21. References
• Schmid, M., Köpke, B. Keijzer, M. and Weilemar, L. (Eds.) (2004). First Language
Attrition: Interdisciplinary persperctives on methodological issues. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
• Schmid, M. (2016). Language attrition: timeline. Language Teaching, 49(2), 186–312.
• Schmid, M., and Köpke, B. (Eds.). (2019). Oxford handbooks in linguistics. The Oxford
handbook of language attrition. (M. Cherciov, T. Karayayla, M. Keijzer, E. De Leeuw, T.
H. Mehotcheva, S. Montrul & M. Polinsky, Collaborators). Oxford University Press.
• Seliger, H. W., and Vago, R. M. (Eds.). (1991). First language attrition. Cambridge
University Press.
• Sorace, A. (2005). Selective optionality in language development. Syntax and variation:
Reconciling the biological and the social, 55-80.

22. References
• Sorace, A. (2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic
Approaches to Bilingualism, 1, 1-33.
• Sorace, A. (2014). Input, timing, and outcomes in a wider model of bilingualism.
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4(3), 377-380.
• Sorace, A. (2016). Referring expressions and executive functions in bilingualism.
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 6, 669-684.
• Tsimpli, I., Sorace, A., Heycock, C. and Filiaci, F. (2004). First Language Attrition and
Syntactic Subjects: A Study of Greek and Italian Near-Native Speakers of English.
International Journal of Bilingualism, 8.