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

Abstract

Recent decades have seen an increase in research informing our understanding of the complex ways in which bilingual development is shaped by biological, cognitive, and behavioral factors. We investigate the predictors that shape, drive, and constrain the development of the first language (L1) of bilinguals, focusing on 92 Turkish–English bilingual adults with a wide range (0–42) of age at onset (AaO). We tested their productive command of L1 lexical, morphological, and syntactic features, investigating to what extent background variables relating to AaO, experience, and attitudes toward the Turkish language and culture predict the relative level of proficiency across these features. To obtain a comprehensive picture of the interaction of these linguistic and extralinguistic factors, we employed structural equation modeling. We show that for speakers with younger AaOs, exposure‐related factors are associated with the level of L1 proficiency they retain as adults; for later bilinguals, exposure‐related factors matter less.

The Study of Heritage Language Development From a Bilingualism and Social Justice Perspective

“…As parents’ L2 changes, how much a household uses the majority language will also change. Even more important for the study of HLD is that the G1 parents’ first languages, far from stable, can change too, because of changes in amounts of L1 use, the state of constant co‐activation typical of bilingual processing, and ad hoc solutions that merge L1 and L2 online and can become entrenched as part of the individual bilingual grammar (Schmid & Köpke, ; see also Schmid & Karayayla, ). These processes occur even when G1 speakers have been raised and educated in the homeland and have functioned for many years of their lives as monolinguals in the minority language prior to migration.…”

Attrition and Reactivation of a Childhood Language: The Case of Returnee Heritage Speakers

“…Generally, the societal language becomes the child's dominant/preferred language. The resulting asymmetrical distribution of language exposure constrains the HSs’ further language development and may lead to performance differences in the HL, compared to monolinguals, in some linguistic domains (Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, ; Schmid & Karayayla, ; Zyzik, ).…”

Different Perspectives on Critical Factors in Heritage Language Development and Maintenance

“…Schmid and Karayayla's () study also reveals an interesting relationship between the AoO of bilingualism and the degree of impact of input/exposure‐related factors on HL proficiency. More specifically, they show that factors related to exposure are strongly associated with the level of HL proficiency retained in adult HL speakers with younger AoOs compared to those with later AoOs.…”

“…Schmid and Karayayla's () study shows that HL speakers of Turkish living in the United Kingdom with higher levels of interactive exposure to Turkish make use of more varied morphosyntactic devices in their free speech, are more accurate on formal and experimental tasks, and retain better lexical access than HL speakers who are less exposed to Turkish. In addition, Zyzik's () study shows that reduced input to Spanish for HL speakers living in the United States during the elementary and middle school years is associated with the different performance of these speakers, compared to monolinguals, on an acceptability judgment task involving conventional and creative (multimorphemic) words.…”