[2] A person's age can predict the likelihood of attrition; children are demonstrably more likely to lose their first language than adults.
Since all bilinguals experience some degree of cross linguistic influence, where the L2 interferes with the retrieval of the speaker's L1, it is difficult to determine if delays and/or mistakes in the L1 are due to attrition or caused by CLI.
As young pre-school children in India and Pakistan, the subjects of her study were often judged to be native speakers of Hindi or Urdu; their mother was far less proficient.
On return visits to their home country, the United States, both children appeared to lose all their L2 while the mother noticed no decline in her own L2 abilities.
Twenty years later, those same young children as adults comprehend not a word from recordings of their own animated conversations in Hindi-Urdu; the mother still understands much of them.
[14] The lexical-semantic relationship usually starts to deteriorate first and most quickly, driven by Cross Linguistic Interference (CLI) from the speaker's L2, and it is believed to be exacerbated by continued exposure to, and frequent use of, the L2.
[15] Evidence for such interlanguage effects can be seen in a study by Pavlenko (2003, 2004) which shows that there was some semantic extension from the L2, which was English, into the L1 Russian speakers' lexicons.
In order to test for lexical attrition, researchers used tests such as picture naming tasks, where they place a picture of an item in front of the participant and ask them to name it, or by measuring lexical diversity in the speaker's spontaneous speech (speech that is unprompted and improvised).
[19] In a study of bilingual Swedes raised outside of Sweden who, in their late twenties, returned to their home country for schooling, the participants demonstrated both language attrition and a complete retention of the underlying syntactic structure of their L1.
Notably, they exhibited the V2, verb second, word order present in most Germanic languages, except English.
This assumption is in line with a range of investigations of L1 attrition which argue that this process may affect interface phenomena (e.g. the distribution of overt and null subjects in pro-drop languages) but will not touch the narrow syntax.
[citation needed] A sociolinguistic approach to this phenomenon is that the acquisition of a native-like L2 accent and the subsequent loss of one's native accent is influenced by the societal norms of the country and the speakers' attempt to adapt in order to feel a part of the culture they are trying to assimilate into.
They envisioned a test to be given to American State Department employees that would include four linguistic categories (syntax, morphology, lexicon, and phonology) and three skill areas (reading, listening, and speaking).
Lambert, in personal communication with Köpke and Schmid,[4] described the results as 'not substantial enough to help much in the development of the new field of language skill attrition'.
The hypotheses are: According to Yoshitomi,[30] the five key aspects related to attrition are neuroplasticity, consolidation, permastore/savings, decreased accessibility, and receptive versus productive abilities.
[3][5][35] Research shows that the complete attrition of a language would occur before the critical period ends.
[4] All available evidence on the age effect for L1 attrition, therefore, indicates that the development of susceptibility displays a curved, not a linear, function.
It states that which was learned first will be retained last, both in 'normal' processes of forgetting and in pathological conditions such as aphasia or dementia.
[37] Also, parallels in noun and verb phrase morphology could be present because of the nature of the tests or because of avoidance by the participants.
Items that are used regularly have a lower required number of neural impulses to trigger its representation in the brain, making that language more stable and less susceptible to attrition.
[35] On the other hand, L1 attrition may also occur if the overall effort to maintain the first language is insufficient while exposed to a dominant L2 environment.
However, even the late AoA bilinguals exhibited some degree of attrition in that they labeled the drinking vessels differently from native monolingual Russian-speaking adults.
These findings therefore indicate strongly that early (prepuberty) and late (postpuberty) exposure to an L2 environment have a different impact on possible fossilization and/or deterioration of the linguistic system.
[44][45] In the face of much evidence to the contrary, one study is often cited to suggest that frequency of use does not correlate strongly with language attrition.
[49] These inferences can be drawn, as strategies for knowledge maintenance will, by definition, precisely oppose actions that lead to forgetting.
The study involved 26 out of 30 initial participants who were native Dutch (L1) speakers who had little to no prior knowledge of Italian (L3), and proficiency in English (L2) as their second language.
Therefore, strategies in the classroom and any other learning environment become an important part of preventing language attrition.
Under this belief, one method of prevention would be to focus on literacy and receptive learning in the classroom, rather than teach students primarily to speak and write.
Another method is to encourage homework and practice that is not mechanical, but instead engaging and opportunistic, using high frequency items the most.
Conversational-style homework and classroom settings, along with focuses on receptive skills, could make one's fluency less susceptible to attrition.