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Lexical access and lexical diversity in first language attrition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

MONIKA S. SCHMID  and
SCOTT JARVIS
MONIKA S. SCHMID*
Affiliation:
University of Essex/University of Groningen
SCOTT JARVIS
Affiliation:
Ohio University
*
Address for correspondence: Monika S. Schmid, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, United Kingdommschmid@essex.ac.uk
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Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of lexical first language (L1) attrition, asking how a decrease in lexical accessibility manifests itself in 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 lexical frequency and distributional measures. The study is based on controlled, elicited and free data from two populations of attriters of L1 German (L2 Dutch and English) and a control population (n = 53 in each group). Group comparisons and a Discriminant Analysis show that lexical diversity, sophistication and the distribution of items across the text in free speech are better predictors of group membership than formal tasks or elicited narratives. Extralinguistic factors, such as frequency of exposure and use or length of residence, have no predictive power for our results.

Keywords

language attritionlexical attritionmental lexiconmethodology
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 729 - 748
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

The authors are particularly grateful for the kind help of Franck Bodmer Mory of the Institut für deutsche Sprache at Mannheim for assessing the frequency of the lemmas from our study against the COSMAS II Corpus.

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