LANGUAGE ATTRITION

1. LANGUAGE ATTRITION

2. Multi dimensional phonemenon • Psycholinguistic,neurolinguistic and sociolinguistic study attrition • Pathological cases are not involved • In this research: Focus on L1 attrition that occurs in L2 environment • People who moved to another country and use the socıetal language of that country • With no or little contact with L1

3. Can non-pathological attrition of L1 be seen as an outcome of acquiring another language?

4. L1 attrition occurs in bilingual environment but this does not mean that all L2 speakers will lose their L1 • Attrition in L1 depends on the frequency of L1 use • L1 attrition should not be seen as a total loss of L1 knowledge but rather as a convergence or shift towards an L2 • Attriters move away from L1 structures and approxımate L2 structures

5. Selectiveness

6. Lexical knowledge • Phonology • Morphosyntax • Certain aspects of linguistic system are more susceptible to attrition • Compared to morphosyntax and phonology,lexical attrition is prevalent in L1 attriters.

7. These forecasts indicate general trends, such as whether the temperatures are expected to be warmer or colder than normal.

8. attrition in the morpho-syntactic module of grammar has beendocumented in various domains such as : • word order (Schaufeli, 1996), • relative clauseformation (Seliger, 1989), • case morphology (Larmouth, 1974; Polinsky, 1997), • Theaspectual system (Montrul, 2002; Polinsky, 1997) • the pronominal system (Sorace 2000). • One important finding all these researches found: attrition is selective.

9. redundancy reductionprinciple • reduction process is associated with some form of ‘markedness’ in the sense that those forms that are less marked in the L2 are more likely to replace more marked forms in the L1, whereas the less marked forms in the L1 appear to be more resistant to attrition. In this account, grammatical forms which are more complexandhave a narrow linguistic distribution are considered marked.

10. It is predicted that null subject will not be affected by attrition. However, the distributionof null and overt subjects will be subject to attrition. According to this view, due to L2 Englishinfluence, L1 Italian attriters (near-native L2 English speakers) will overgeneralizeovert pronouns to contexts in which monolingual Italians would use a null subject. • That is, overt pronouns will become optionally unspecified for (Topic Shift) and thuswill occur in [-Topic Shift] contexts. Sorace (2000, p. 723) interprets this as ‘loss of restrictions in the distribution of overt and null pronouns’ in L1 Italian due to L2English.

11. DEFINITION: attrition/loss in one linguistic system is considered to be a direct consequence of interference from the other linguistic system of the bilingual. From this standpoint, the following definition of L1 attrition is adopted: L1 attrition is the restructuring and incorporation of L2 elements/rules into the L1 grammar as reflected in a speaker’s acceptance of syntactically deviant L1 sentences under the influence of L2 rules and constraints (Pavlenko, 2000, p. 179; Seliger, 1996, p. 606).

12. the Activation ThresholdHypothesis • The notion of inhibition wasoriginally proposed to account for the distinction between the loss and inaccessibility of linguistic information in various memorydisorders. • The notion of inhibition is now discussed under the Activation ThresholdHypothesis, which essentially specifies the relation between the frequency of use of a linguistic item and its activation and availability to the language user.

13. The more an item is activated, the lower its activationthreshold is. The threshold of activation raises if the item is inactive, i.e. unselected (and disused). It is more difficult to (re)activate an item with a high activation threshold. In other words, when a particular linguistic item has a high activation threshold, more activating impulses are required to reactivate it (Paradis, 1997).

14. 2. Syntactic property under investigation 2.1. Binding in English (a) John believes that [he is intelligent]. (b) John kissed [his wife]. (c) Nobody believes that [he is intelligent]. The overt embedded subject ‘he’ can be coreferential (a) or be bound (c) by the matrix subject. Is she John’s wife or somebody else’s wife? 1. Bound variable interpretation X believes that x is intelligent. 2. Disjoint interpretation X believes that y is intelligent.

15. Thestatement (c) is ambiguousbetweenboundanddisjointreadings: • ‘nobody considers himself/herself to beintelligent.’ • ‘nobody considers a particular person in the discourse to be intelligent.’

16. 2.1.1 Binding in Turkish Twoovertpronominalsand a nullpronoun: ‘o’ and ‘kendisi’ ‘s/he’, ‘self’ andprorespectively. (7) O/kendi-si/pro Londra’ya git-ti S/he self-3SG proLondon-DAT go-PST ‘S/he wenttoLondon’ (8) Burak o-nu /kendi-si-ni /pro beğen-iyor Burak s/he-ACC self-3SG-ACC prolike-PRG ‘Burak likeshim /self /pro’ Subject position can be occupied by overt pronouns and null pronoun.

17. Bindingpossibilities of overtandnullpronouns in embeddedsubjectpositions. (9a) Burak [o-nun zeki ol-duğ-u]-nu düşün-üyor. Overt ‘o’ Burak s/he-GEN intelligent be-NOM-3SGPOSS-ACC think-PRG (9b) Burak [kendi-si-nin zeki ol-duğ-u]-nu düşün-üyor. Overt ‘kendisi’ Burak self-3SG-GEN intelligent be-NOM-3SGPOSS-ACC think-PRG (9c) Burak [pro zeki ol-duğ-u]-nu düşün-üyor. Null pro Burak pro intelligent be-NOM-3SGPOSS-ACC think-PRG ‘Burak thinksthat [he/self/pro is intelligent.] The overt pronoun ‘o’ can neverbe bound by the matrix subject. It only allows a disjoint reading. In contrast, the overtpronoun ‘kendisi’ and nullpronoun ‘pro’ can be bound by the matrix subject or have disjoint readings. Turkishovertpronoun ‘o’does not patternsimilarlywithits English conterpart ‘s/he’ in embeddedsubjectpositions.

18. Differencebtw English & Turkishovertpronounbinding is illustratedoncemore! • (12a) John saidIP[he wouldcome.] • (12b) John DP[o-nun gel-eceğ-i]-ni söyledi. • (13a) John kissed [his wife.] • (13b) John [o-nun karı-sı]-nı öp-tü.

19. ResearchQuestions • Do native Turkishspeakers maintain the contrast between the L1 and L2 overt pronouns with respect to theirbinding properties? • Do native Turkish speakers maintain the contrast between the twoovert pronominals in L1 Turkish (o and kendisi)? • Do native Turkish speakers maintain L1 knowledge regarding bindingproperties of the null pronoun despite extensive input from the non-pro-drop L2?

20. Predictions • Only the L1properties that have similar forms in the L2 (hence incompetitionwith the L2 forms)willundergo attrition. • L1 elements that have nocorresponding forms in the L2 will not be vulnerable to attrition as they will not be incompetition with the L2 elements.

21. The study Participants Twenty-four native Turkish speakers who reached the ultimate grammar in L2 English The participants, aged between 29 and 72. The length of stay ranged from 10 to 43 years. (North America (Canada or the US) ) Effectsof attrition are reported to start even after eight years (Olshtain & Barzilay, 1991), Lengthof stay was defined in threelevels: 10–19, 20–29, 30 years and above

22. Almost all of them had their first English exposure at schools in Turkey. • Emigrated to North America, learned English at schools and working environment. • Exceptfor social interactions with other Turks, they used Englishextensively in their daily life.

23. In the area of language attrition (as in language acquisition), it is important to establish abaseline to which any language change can be compared. To establish this baseline, 30 nativeTurkish speakers, aged between 20 and 70 were tested. This group includedpeople who have been living in Turkey since birth and who had some knowledge of English

24. Tests • The tests included a written interpretation task, a truth-value judgement task and a picture identification–listening task.

25. Test 1. Written interpretation task • This test was adopted from Kanno (1997). It included 48 items with 24 referential and24 quantified antecedents, where each category had 12 overt and 12 null pronouns. In thistest, participants were given a Turkish sentence like (14) and asked to select possibleantecedent(s) for the embedded subject pronoun. Forexample, in (14), participants were expected to circle the option (b) (i.e. disjoint reading) because the overt pronoun «o» cannot be bound by the matrix subject in Turkish

26. (14) Buraki [o-nun*i/k sinema-ya gid-eceg-i]-ni soyle-di • Burak s/he-GEN cinema-DAT go-NOM-3SGPOSS-ACC say-PST • ‘Buraki said (that) [s/he*i/k would go to the movies]’ • Soru (question): Sizce bu cümleye göre kim sinemaya gidecek olabilir? (According to this sentence, who could be the person that would go to the movies?)

27. (a) Burak ? • (b) Baskabirkisi(some other person) ? • (c) Hem (a) hem (b) (Both (a) and (b) ?

28. Test 2. Truth-value judgement task (story task) • Unlike the first test which includedisolated sentences, this test involved judging the truth value of sentences within aparticular context. In this task, participants were given 12 short English stories. • Participants are asked to judge the subsequent Turkish sentence as true or false according to the context given in the story.

29. Story. Mary and John went to a restaurant. Mary ordered seafood and John ordered apizza. The bill came to 50 dollars. John complained that the bill was high but Mary didn’t agree. • Target sentence to be judged. • Mary o-nun restoran-ı pahalı bul-dug-u-nu söyle-di • Mary s/he-GEN restaurant-ACC expensive find-NOM-3SGPOSS-ACC say-PST • ‘Maryi said (that) s/he*i/k found the restaurant expensive’

30. If the participants answer as true, this means that theyunderstand the disjoint reading but if they say false, that suggests that they understandthe bound reading for the overt pronoun «o», an option that is not allowed in the nativeTurkish grammar. However, in English, the embedded subject pronoun can be bound bythe matrix subject Mary. Thus, any response in that direction might suggest L2 English effects.

31. Test 3. Picture identification–listening task • This test is also a truth value judgment task • Insteadof stories, it involves listening and picture identification. • Participantswere asked to listen to a series of Turkishsentences, involving pronouns and judge the corresponding colour picture in front ofthem as true or false.

32. They were presented the picture and they heardthe sentence simultaneously, participantsdecided whether or not the picture they saw matched the sentence they heard. • This test included 24 sentences (eight different pictures, each repeated threetimes) The items included 16 overt and 8 null pronouns.

33. Participants hear. • (16) Ahmet Sarı o-nun iyi sarkı soyle-dig-i-ni soyle-di • Ahmet yellow s/he-GEN well song tell-NOM-3SGPOSS-ACC say-PAST • ‘AhmetSarıi said that s/he*i/k sings well’

35. In this example, the picture depicts that Ahmet Sarı (Mr Yellow) himself sings. TheTurkish sentence that the participants hear cannot be expressing this because the overtpronoun «o»is obligatorily disjoint from the sentential subject. If participants think that thepicture and the sentence match, i.e. if they say true for this item, then they must beassuming that the overt pronoun «o»is bound by the matrix subject, which would be awrong answer. If, on the other hand, they choose false, this suggests that they know that «o»has to have a sentence-external referent.

36. In comparison to the first two untimed tests, in this task, more ‘on-line’processing was involved as participants heard target sentences in real time durationand made their judgements in a short time period. The motivation for including sucha task came from the claims that interference between the two languages of abilingual is more likely during on-line language processing. Thus, includinga listening task might provide an opportunity to investigate these claims in the present study.

37. Referential-Quantified-Disjoint-Bound • Berfin `onun` agladiginisoyledi • Berfin `kendisinin` agladiginisoyledi. • Berfin _ agladiginisoyledi. • Kimse `onun` geleceginisoylemedi. • Kimse `kendisinin` geleceginisoylemedi. • Kimse _ geleceginisoylemedi.

39. Written Interpretation Task -`o` • The overt pronoun `o` in the embedded subject position cannot be bound by the matrix subject irrespective of whether the antecedent is referential or quantified. • Berfin `onun` calistiginisoyledi. • Kimse `onun` calisdiginisoylemedi. • Berfin said that `she` is working.

40. Written Interpretation Task -`o` In the context of referential antecedents, the attrition group, like the native control subjects, hardly allowed for the bound reading of `o`. With respect to the disjoint reading, in both referential and quantified antecedent contexts, the attrition and the control groups correctly allowed the disjoint reading for the pronoun `o` to a higher extent than the other readings.

43. Written Interpretation Task -`o` Unlike the English pronoun, the Turkish overt pronoun `o` cannot have any reading other than disjoint. However, the attrition group, by allowing more ambiguous (bound and disjoint) readings for this pronoun, diverged from the control group.

44. Written Interpretation Task -`kendisi` Recall that the pronominal `kendisi` is potentially ambiguous between bound and disjoint readings. Therefore, the groups were expected to assign ‘ambiguous’ (bound and disjoint) interpretations more often than the other interpretations. Berfin `kendisinin` agladiginisoyledi Kimse `kendisinin` agladiginisoylemedi.

45. Written Interpretation Task -`kendisi` In the attrition group, the pronoun `kendisi` received more ‘bound-only’ interpretations. the control group did not allow the ‘disjoint-only’ reading for `kendisi` at all. The rate of the ‘disjoint-only’ option was higher in the attrition group

47. Written Interpretation Task -`kendisi` Overall, the attrition group, like the native controls, appeared to know that the form `kendisi` could take both bound or disjoint reference. The bound interpretation was more salient for the attrition group. The difference we observe between controls and the attrition group might suggest that native speakers were more aware of the ambiguity that is associated with the form `kendisi`.

48. Written Interpretation Task -`kendisi` Schaufeli(1996, p. 166) suggests, this might be due to the fact that the control group has more experience with various rules and sentence types and therefore ‘allow themselves more often to abandon the most common interpretations.’

49. Attriters While the overt pronoun `o` received more disjoint interpretations, the overt pronoun `kendisi` received more bound interpretations.

50. Written Interpretation Task -`Null Pronoun` • The null pronoun in the embedded subject position is ambiguous between bound and disjoint readings irrespective of whether the antecedent is referential or quantified. • Berfin _ geleceginisoyledi. • Kimse _ geleceginisoylemedi.