Language Attrition in Dutch Migrants

Abstract

Since the 1980s language attrition has become a field of investigation in linguistics and scholars have come to see language attrition as part of the process of language development in bilinguals. First language attrition is a process that can be observed in late bilinguals that have emigrated during adulthood. The process of L1 attrition seems to make language less accessible to the bilingual, which becomes apparent in word-finding difficulties and interferences from the second language (Keijzer, 2008). Since the 1980s, a number of studies have looked at the effects of language attrition on the first language of migrants. However, a comparison between the amount of involvement in the L2-speaking community and the influence of L1 attrition on morphology and syntax has never been made. Through the analysis of transcripts of interviews and questionnaires from a previous study by Hulsen (2000), the present study tries to establish the presence of a correlation between these two variables. The analyses of the present study revealed that there was no relation between the frequency of use and number of social situations in which subjects used Dutch and language attrition on morphology and syntax. Whereas syntax appeared to be almost invulnerable to language attrition, morphology did suffer from language attrition, though not necessarily from L2 influence, but rather from internal language restructuring of the first language.