Lost and found: Investigating a bilingual child’s L1 lexical attrition and recovery

Abstract

Aims and Objectives:

We examined the extent of L1 vocabulary attrition in a Korean child following her relocation to the United States at the age of 6 years 10 months, and the subsequent restoration of her L1 vocabulary upon her return to Korea 10 months later.

Methodology:

A picture-naming task was administered on a regular basis over a period of several months, beginning shortly after the child’s arrival in the United States.

Data and Analysis:

The data were analyzed to determine the child’s accuracy in producing common nouns in the L1.

Findings/Conclusion:

The study shows significant L1 vocabulary attrition after just 1 month, with an inability to access half of the test items after just 4 months and a drop in accuracy to 25% after 9 months. Upon return to Korea, the child’s L1 vocabulary improved rapidly, surpassing English usage within 3 weeks and reaching 82% accuracy within 6 weeks. These findings underscore the vulnerability of children to language attrition in a monolingual environment while also highlighting the remarkable resilience of their L1 skills.

Originality:

The study traced the child’s L1 decline and recovery in accordance with a strict timetable. By beginning measurements within a week of the child’s exposure to English following her subsequent reintroduction to Korean, the study was able to document the earliest manifestations of lexical attrition, its rapid progression, and its subsequent reversal—a pattern of decline and recovery that is rarely studied in this manner.

Significance/Implications:

This study contributes to the field by systematically documenting the impact on L1 vocabulary of a sudden change in linguistic environment, providing rare insights into the dynamics of lexical attrition in early bilingualism.