First Language Attrition as a Function of Age at Onset of Bilingualism: First Language Attainment of Turkish–English Bilinguals in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This investigation aimed to provide insights into the controversial debate on the role that age at onset of bilingualism plays in human language capacity with a focus on what it entails for first language (L1) attrition. L1 performance of Turkish immigrants (n = 57) in the United Kingdom with age at onset ranging between 7 and 34 years was compared to that of Turkish monolingual controls (n = 29) across two linguistic properties: structural complexity and accent. Findings generally showed that although the immigrants achieved nativelike proficiency with respect to the overall structural complexity of their L1, this was not the case for accent as those with an earlier age of onset were less likely to sound like native Turkish speakers. We discuss these findings in relation to two competing theoretical models of age effects and suggest that attrition data need to be better accommodated within these models. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. All materials are publicly accessible via the IRIS Repository at https://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

The Roles of Age, Attitude, and Use in First Language Development and Attrition of Turkish–English Bilinguals

“…Despite a tendency across such Turkish communities to remain loyal to their language and culture and a high level of endogamy (e.g., Backus, ), linguistic changes have been observed in a range of studies. These changes may affect all areas of the language, from accentedness (Karayayla & Schmid, ; Stangen, Kupisch, Proietti Ergün, & Zielke, ) through grammatical (e.g., Gürel, ; Onar Valk & Backus, ; Yağmur, ; Yılmaz, ), morphological (Arslan, De Kok, & Bastiaanse, ; Karayayla, in press; Pfaff, ), and lexical (Backus, ; Karayayla, 2018; Treffers‐Daller, Daller, Furman, & Rothman, ; Yılmaz & Schmid, ) complexity and sophistication.…”

“…Language Learning 70:S1, March 2020, pp. 54-84 accentedness (Karayayla & Schmid, 2019;Stangen, Kupisch, Proietti Ergün, & Zielke, 2015) through grammatical (e.g., Gürel, 2004;Onar Valk & Backus, 2013;Yagmur, 1997;Yılmaz, 2011), morphological (Arslan, De Kok, & Bastiaanse, 2015;Karayayla, in press;Pfaff, 1993), and lexical (Backus, 2012;Karayayla, 2018;Treffers-Daller, Daller, Furman, & Rothman, 2016;Yılmaz & Schmid, 2012) complexity and sophistication.…”

“…In keeping with other research on language attrition and heritage language development, differences between the language used by Turkish immigrants or heritage speakers on the one hand and monolingual speakers in the country of origin on the other have found to be most strongly visible in the generations that were born in or moved to the host country at a young age (Pfaff, 1993;Treffers-Daller, Ozsoy, & van Hout, 2007), but have also been observed in those speakers who were mature monolinguals at the time of emigration (e.g., Gürel & Yılmaz, 2011;Yılmaz, 2013). To date, few comparisons have been made of populations with larger ranges of AaOs (but see Huls & van de Mond, 1992;Karayayla & Schmid, 2019).…”

Predictors of Language Dominance: An Integrated Analysis of First Language Attrition and Second Language Acquisition in Late Bilinguals

“…Accentedness: while monolingual populations are typically perceived to be at ceiling in global foreign accent rating experiments, several studies have established an increase in variance of such ratings in immersed late bilinguals which can lead to some attriters being perceived as unambiguously non-native (e.g., de Leeuw et al, 2010; Hopp and Schmid, 2013; Bergmann et al, 2016; Karayayla, 2018: ch. 4) and subtle shifts occurring in the production of both segmentals and suprasegmentals away from monolingual native norms (e.g., Mennen, 2004; de Leeuw, 2008; Chang, 2012; Bergmann et al, 2016).…”

“…A wide range of studies have demonstrated this, for example, for complex and infrequent syntactic phenomena. For example, several studies of embedding structures in L1 Turkish have found attriters to diverge most from monolinguals on those types of embedding which are morphologically the most complex (i.e., involve the highest number of suffixations/transformations) and occur least frequently in free speech (e.g., Yagmur, 1997; Yılmaz, 2011; Karayayla, 2018). In a similar vein, attriters are consistently outperformed by non-attrited controls when it comes to the completion of complex written tasks (such as C -tests or cloze tests, e.g., Schmid and Dusseldorp, 2010; Cherciov, 2011; Varga, 2012; Kasparian, 2015).…”