Understanding Language Attrition through Orthography

Exploiting Orthography-free Phonological Evidence in Orthography-rich Language

In modern linguistics where natural spoken language has been the main, if not the sole, target of research inquiry, one area in which orthography becomes as yet at issue is phonology. This should be the case because (a) writing systems encode phonological structure, syllables in particular, as shown in Gnanadesikan (2011), accordingly (b) the orthographical knowledge of a language may merge int...

First language attrition.

Speakers who live in an L2 environment for an extended period of time often experience change in the way in which they use their L1, a process referred to as L1 attrition. This article provides an overview of language attrition phenomena at various linguistic levels. However, attrition cannot be trivially or linearly related to factors such as the frequency of use of the L1. It is argued here t...

Language Networks as Models of Cognition: Understanding Cognition through Language

Language is inherently cognitive and distinctly human. Separating languageas-object from the human mind that processes and creates language fails to capture the full language system. Linguistics traditionally has focused on the study of language as a static representation, removed from the human mind. Network analysis has traditionally been focused on the properties and structure that emerge fr...

Lexical first language attrition Title : Lexical access and lexical diversity in first language attrition *

This paper presents an investigation of lexical first language (L1) attrition, assessing in what way a decrease in lexical accessibility manifests itself for long-term residents in a second language (L2) environment. We question the measures typically used in attrition studies (formal tasks and type-token ratios) and argue for an in-depth analysis of free spoken data, including factors such as ...

Dutch in Indonesia: Language Attrition or Language Contact?