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What is the source of L1 attrition? The effect of recent L1 re-exposure on Spanish speakers under L1 attrition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2015

GLORIA CHAMORRO ,
ANTONELLA SORACE  and
PATRICK STURT
GLORIA CHAMORRO*
Affiliation:
University of Kent
ANTONELLA SORACE
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
PATRICK STURT
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
Address for correspondence: Gloria Chamorro University of KentDepartment of English Language and Linguistics RutherfordCollege CanterburyCT2 7NX. G.Chamorro@kent.ac.uk
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Abstract

The recent hypothesis that L1 attrition affects the ability to process interface structures but not knowledge representations (Sorace, 2011) is tested by investigating the effects of recent L1 re-exposure on antecedent preferences for Spanish pronominal subjects, using offline judgements and online eye-tracking measures. Participants included a group of native Spanish speakers experiencing L1 attrition (‘attriters’), a second group of attriters exposed exclusively to Spanish before they were tested (‘re-exposed’), and a control group of Spanish monolinguals. The judgement data shows no significant differences between the groups. Moreover, the monolingual and re-exposed groups are not significantly different from each other in the eye-tracking data. The results of this novel manipulation indicate that attrition effects decrease due to L1 re-exposure, and that bilinguals are sensitive to input changes. Taken together, the findings suggest that attrition affects online sensitivity with interface structures rather than causing a permanent change in speakers’ L1 knowledge representations.

Keywords

L1 attritionL1 re-exposureeye-trackingsubject pronounsSpanish
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 520 - 532
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

This study was partly supported by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Special thanks to all the participants who took part in the study.

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