Language attrition – implications for second/forei gn language acquisition

Abstract

The inquiry provides an overview of the central issues that arise in the consideration of second/foreign language attrition.The seminal articles included provide an insightful view of what constitutes the phenomenon in question.The research on non-native language attrition is still weak (K.Bardovi-Harlig/ D. Stringer 2010) and requires more attention not only on the part of linguists studying the problem but language teachers as well.Non-native linguistic knowledge is not given once and for all and as such cannot be taken for granted.It requires maintenance, effort, and diligence.Learners may begin to attrite long before they fully acquire the language they study.Consequently, teachers have to be aware of the means to prevent language decline.Languages are intuitively associated with the processes of acquisition, learning, speech production or linguistic use.In other words, we associate languages with a gain.Therefore, it seems less intuitive to think of them in terms of breakdown, loss or attrition.However, language attrition is very much a linguistic reality.Overall, the term refers to longstanding loss rather than temporary losses of linguistic material (Brown 1994) and is triggered by "disuse, lack of input or reduced input" (K.Bardovi-Harlig/ D. Stringer 2010:34).More specifically, it covers a range of possibilities where language is lost by communities or individual speakers in both neurologically pathological (i.e., patients with language impairments due to a stroke or trauma to the brain) and non-pathological populations (i.e., language users or learners).Furthermore, the problem of language attrition in healthy individuals, is at least three-fold as it concerns: 1. first generation immigrant population -L1 (first language) loss in L2 (second language) environment; 2. second-generation speakers (also known as "heritage speakers" or "incomplete learners") -loss of the heritage language; 3. (advanced) learners of second or foreign languages (FL) learned at school -loss of L2/FL in L1 environment which is the scope of the present inquiry.In the domain of non-native language acquisition a further division is made between L2 attrition (the context of immersed learning) and FL attrition (the context of instructed learning).They differ in terms of the quality and amount of input, exposure to and the use of non-native language as well as involvement of memory (M.S. Schmid/ T.H. Mehotcheva 2012).The literature recognizes a variety of reasons