Lexical Access in L1 Attrition—Competition versus Frequency: A Comparison of Turkish and Moroccan Attriters in the Netherlands

Lexical access and lexical diversity are often assumed to be vulnerable to first language (L1) attrition. They also differ between monolinguals and nonimmersed bilinguals. This raises the question whether lexical attrition can be ascribed to nonuse or to competition between the two languages. We compare two populations of late L2 learners of Dutch living in the Netherlands. One of them was largely monolingual prior to emigration (Turkish migrants), while the other comes from a highly multilingual society (Morocco). While both experimental populations should be affected by erosion due to nonuse, we expect competition effects to be more strongly pronounced when compared against a monolingual versus a multilingual baseline population. The results show that this is not the case with attrition effects being even stronger in the Moroccan group than in the Turkish group. Furthermore, there is no impact of individual measures of frequency of exposure or language attitudes among the attriters. We conclude that being immersed in an L2 environment leads to weakening of lexical access

L1 accessibility among Turkish-Dutch bilinguals

This study investigates whether lexical knowledge in the first language (L1) of late Turkish-Dutch bilinguals becomes less accessible for the production of fluent speech and in controlled experimental tasks as a result of extended stay in the Netherlands. It is also considered to what degree extra-linguistic factors can account for this phenomenon. Data are collected from the first generation Turkish migrants (n = 52) and from a monolingual reference group in Turkey (n = 52) via a lexical naming task, a free speech task and a sociolinguistic background questionnaire. The results show that the bilingual group is indistinguishable from the monolinguals on the experimental task. However, in the free speech task, they not only are significantly more disfluent than the monolinguals but also make significantly less use of diverse, in particular low-frequency, vocabulary. Overall, the results signal that bilinguals were outperformed by the monolinguals in spontaneous language production but not on a controlled task. We interpret this finding to indicate a decrease of automaticity in the access to linguistic knowledge which impedes the rapid integration of information from all linguistic levels. Further analyses with respect to the relations between the L1 change and nonlinguistic factors are discussed within the Activation Threshold Hypothesis (ATH).</jats:p

Second language development in a migrant context: Turkish community in the Netherlands

AbstractThis study explores the extent to which first language (L1) versus second language (L2) use and attachments to native versus majority language and culture influence the proficiency in the L2 Dutch among the Turkish-Dutch bilinguals. The community under investigation is of particular significance because it represents the largest non-Western ethnic group in the Netherlands and it has often been discussed in the context of the group members’ ethnic and linguistic attachments as opposed to their perceived unwillingness to adopt the cultural norms of the Dutch society. What makes this immigration setting interesting is that the shift from tolerance to startling levels of restrictiveness in policies of cultural and linguistic integration has nowhere been as fast as in the Netherlands. Data are collected from the first generation Turkish immigrants (n = 45) who migrated to the Netherlands after the age of 15 and lived there for 10 years or longer and native Dutch speakers (n = 39) via an elicited speech task, a lexical naming/recognition task and a sociolinguistic background questionnaire. The first set of analyses reveals several links between the individual variables (i.e., L1 use in the family and with friends, L2 use at work, level of education, length of residence and cultural preference) and different aspects of L2 proficiency. However, the effect sizes of these correlations are weak to moderate. The second set of analyses applies a discriminant analysis where proficiency in the L2 has been established as one integrated score. In this analysis, only preferred language emerges as the best predictor of language development.</jats:p