Activating L1-attrition: A priming experiment

Abstract

The Attrition via Acquisition (AvA) model unifies acquisition and attrition by proposing that intake to the inference engine can come from the first language (L1) or the second language (L2). What this model does not specify, however, is the specific psycholinguistic mechanisms that can lead to attrition nor how partial representation may come about. This study expands the AvA model by incorporating activation as a key mechanism and precursor to attrition, and tests the proposal with cross-linguistic priming in bilinguals. We present data from two studies of Finnish and Estonian/English in a community of long-term L1 Finnish emigrants in USA, Canada, Australia, and Estonia. The target condition were the alternation between the marked and unmarked form of the accusative, and marked accusative and partitive, since these two morphemes have been previously documented to suffer attrition in contact with English. Although results did not indicate cross-linguistic priming from either English or Estonian into Finnish, there was evidence of within-language priming in the English–Finnish bilinguals. These findings support the incorporation of activation into the model, but also suggest that the source of attrition for morphology in particular might not come from the L2.