Schmid Monika S. Language Attrition

Cambridge University Press. 2011. — 296 pages. — (Key Topics in Sociolinguistics). — ISBN: 0521760402; 0521759935'Language attrition' describes the loss of, or changes to, grammatical and other features of a language as a result of declining use by speakers who have changed their linguistic environment and language habits. In such a situation there may, for example, be simplification in the tense system or in certain properties of subordinate clauses; some vocabulary items might fall into disuse and phonetic features may be restructured. These changes can be affected by features of the speaker's environment, but also by his or her attitudes and processes of identification. This book provides a detailed and up-to-date introduction to the way in which language attrition can affect language, as well as to the extra- and sociolinguistic features involved. It also familiarizes the reader with experimental approaches to attrition and data analysis techniques and provides hands-on guidelines on how to apply them.Linguistic aspects of language attrition
What is attrition?
Cross-linguistic influence and the mental lexicon
Attrition in the mental lexicon
Attrition and the structure of language
Extralinguistic aspects of language attrition
Personal background factors
The role of L1 input and output
Attitudes and identities
Conducting research on language attrition – preliminary considerations
The test populations: participant characteristics and acquisition
Types of linguistic knowledge
Experimental designs for attrition research – the language attrition test battery
Lexical tasks
Grammaticality judgment tasks
Other grammatical tasks
Free speech
Coding and analysing the data
Transcribing and coding free speech: the CHILDES project
Coding and reporting experimental data
Interpreting your data: inferential statistics