The theoretical significance of research on language attrition for understanding bilingualism

The most important and most controversial issue for bilingualism research is the question why children are better at language learning than adults: while all normally developing children reach fully native speaker proficiency, foreign language learners hardly ever do.     Researchers disagree as to whether this age effect is due to language-specific neurobiological and maturational processes or to more general factors linked to cognitive development and the competition of two language systems in the bilingual mind. As both scenarios predict non-native like behavior of second language (L2) learners, it has to date been impossible to conclusively establish which of them actually obtains.     I propose that new insights can be provided by including first language (L1) attriters in the comparison: migrants who are using their L2 dominantly, and whose L1 is consequently deteriorating. These speakers acquired their L1 without maturational constraints, but they experience the same impact of bilingualism and competition between languages as L2 learners do. They therefore provide a source of data that is non-native for reasons which are known.     If attaining native speaker proficiency is maturationally constrained, processing strategies should remain native-like in an L1 which has become non-dominant. If the persistent problems of L2 learners are due to issues such as lack of exposure and competition between languages, attriters should become more similar to foreign-language learners than to natives

Language Attrition: The next phase

International audienceThe study of L1 attrition is currently entering its third decade. However, after twenty years of diligent investigation resulting in numerous theoretical and empirical papers the questions on this topic still greatly outweigh the answers. Findings from individual studies seem to indicate that it cannot even be said with any certainty whether an L1 in which a certain level of proficiency has been reached can ever undergo significant attrition, let alone how or why it might. This chapter will attempt to identify and clarify these issues, in order to establish the starting ground from which the individual papers will proceed. The first section will give a chronological overview of how the field of language attrition has developed over the past two decades, try to identify the concerns and forces that have shaped it, and point out developments and changes. The second section introduces those extralinguistic factors that have been shown to play important roles in attrition. The third section presents an overview of theoretical frameworks within which language attrition studies have been conducted, while the fourth section focuses on questions of research design. The final section is an outline of the structure and contents of this volume

Austria in the COVID-19 Pandemic - Citizens' Satisfaction with Crisis Measures and Communication

Background: We assess satisfaction about various aspects of the 2020 COVID-19 crisis for a representative sample of 1798 respondents living in Austria. Survey questions were added to a previously planned data collection, based on concrete questions discussed at a BKA Clearing Board meeting (Tuesday, 14.04.2020: Subarbeitsgruppe Psycho-Soziale-Effekte im Rahmen von "COVID-19 / Future Operations"). Findings: Overall, people living in Austria are satisfied with the various crisis management elements of the COVID-19 pandemic, as answers are mainly at the positive side of the response scale that ranges from -3 (Very unsatisfied) to +3 (Very satisfied). Citizens are most satisfied with how well they implement the measures of the federal government themselves (and/or their employer) to overcome the Corona crisis, and about how they are able to comply with these measures. In contrast, they are least satisfied with how national media report on the measures (Newspapers, TV, etc.). Splitting-up satisfaction evaluations for gender, age, region, level of education, occupation, or sector of employment does show no or some small (but no substantial) differences for particular subgroups. We can observe an age effect for satisfaction on how others deal with the government's COVID-19 measures. This means: the older people are, the more satisfied they are about how others comply with the COVID-19 measures. Self-employed respondents are least satisfied with how the government is dealing with the crisis and communicating the measures. Students are most satisfied about that. However, it has to be noted that this data is from 17 April to 29 April (2020), which is just before loosening, in a second round, many of the restrictions on small businesses

Foreign language attrition

The present contribution discusses recent developments and future directions in the attrition of instructed foreign languages, arguing for a distinction between this type of attrition and attrition involving second languages acquired implicitly in an immersion setting. An overview of the history of research in the field and the most prominent findings is provided, followed by a discussion of theoretical models and methodologically problematic issues. We conclude by outlining some future directions for the field.</jats:p

Experimentally evolved trypanosome: infection success and virulence in the bumblebee

In this paper, Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) is applied to knowledge management. Based on the VSM, domains of knowledge are identified that an organization should possess to maintain its viability. The logic of the VSM is also used to support the diagnosis, design and implementation of the knowledge processes that should make and keep organizationally viable knowledge available

First language attrition and reversion among older migrants

Emigration usually requires speakers to become bilingual, and eventually they may even become dominant in their second language. This can lead to a gradual loss of proficiency in the first language, a phenomenon referred to as first language attrition. As migrants become elderly, however, they sometimes report a "reversion" in language dominance, whereby the second language, which they have used in their daily lives for years or decades, recedes and the first language becomes stronger again. There are largely anecdotal cases of communication between such speakers and their children who were not brought up to speak their parents' first language becoming impossible. It is, however, very difficult to separate fact from fiction in such reports. This article will give an overview of changes in lexical access and fluency in the first language of adult migrants. It will assess simplistic predictions for a linear development of first and second languages against a more complex perspective which takes into account psycholinguistic aspects of activation, inhibition, and cognitive ageing. The predictions made on this basis will be tested on a large-scale quantitative investigation of language proficiency among migrants of German and Dutch descent in the Netherlands and Canada. © 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG

Statistik frei praktizierender Hebammen der Schweiz : Auswertung der Daten 2011

Bericht im Auftrag des Schweizerischen Hebammenverbandes SH

Statistik frei praktizierender Hebammen der Schweiz : Auswertung der Daten 2012

Bericht im Auftrag des Schweizerischen Hebammenverbandes SH

Dynamic Maintenance of Monotone Dynamic Programs and Applications

Dynamic programming (DP) is one of the fundamental paradigms in algorithm design. However, many DP algorithms have to fill in large DP tables, represented by two-dimensional arrays, which causes at least quadratic running times and space usages. This has led to the development of improved algorithms for special cases when the DPs satisfy additional properties like, e.g., the Monge property or total monotonicity. In this paper, we consider a new condition which assumes (among some other technical assumptions) that the rows of the DP table are monotone. Under this assumption, we introduce a novel data structure for computing (1+?)-approximate DP solutions in near-linear time and space in the static setting, and with polylogarithmic update times when the DP entries change dynamically. To the best of our knowledge, our new condition is incomparable to previous conditions and is the first which allows to derive dynamic algorithms based on existing DPs. Instead of using two-dimensional arrays to store the DP tables, we store the rows of the DP tables using monotone piecewise constant functions. This allows us to store length-n DP table rows with entries in [0,W] using only polylog(n,W) bits, and to perform operations, such as (min,+)-convolution or rounding, on these functions in polylogarithmic time. We further present several applications of our data structure. For bicriteria versions of k-balanced graph partitioning and simultaneous source location, we obtain the first dynamic algorithms with subpolynomial update times, as well as the first static algorithms using only near-linear time and space. Additionally, we obtain the currently fastest algorithm for fully dynamic knapsack