The production of dative structures in Italian English-immersed late bilinguals: a comparative study on Language Attrition

Abstract

While studies have focused on the impact of a L1 on a L2, less is known about dominant language transfer in L1 productions. This study aims at investigating first language (L1) attrition in Italian English-immersed late bilinguals. These bilinguals have learnt an additional language in adulthood and have been living in this language environment for an extended period of time. More precisely, the population of this study consisted in a group of Italians (n = 42) who have been living abroad for at least 5 years (English-immersed Participants). Data was also collected from a group of Italian L1 - English L2 late bilinguals in Italy (n = 24) with advanced levels of English proficiency (Controls). Native Language Attrition refers to situations where the speaker of a language experiences a gradual decrease of L1 performance, and this is not caused by a deterioration of the brain (e.g., due to age, illness or injury) but triggered by disuse, and pressure from another language due to a change of the linguistic environment (Schmid, 2008). Changes occurring at a cognitive level due to L1-L2 interaction patterns in bilingual minds suggest high plasticity of the brain and a strong adaptability of brain structures, even in the case of fully acquired L1s. We use a cross-linguistic Structural Priming task to investigate the production of Datives (8 Double Objects (DOs), 8 Prepositional Datives (PDs)) in both English-immersed Participants and Controls. Whereas English allows two alternative constructions to express the meaning of a ditransitive event, namely DOs (e.g., The girl gave the teacher a flower) and PDs (e.g., The girl gave a flower to the teacher), in Italian, the DO option is unlicenced and its use would yield an ungrammatical sentence. Italian does allow a dispreferred construction (Shifted PD) where the PD recipient immediately follows the verb. We predict that when primed with DO structures in English, Italian participants may resort to this construction. Participants were presented with a written English prime and asked to read it aloud before being recorded describing a target picture in Italian. The same verbs were kept between Prime and Target, and DO- PD-biases were manipulated (Gries & Stefanowitsch, 2004). This study attempts to answer the following questions: To what extent can cross-language interference lead to a change of L1 syntactic structures due to the phenomenon of Language Attrition? That is to say, can cross-linguistic Structural Priming be observed with language-specific syntactic structures not shared between languages? What role do environmental factors play on the phenomenon of L1 attrition? In other words, are there differences in the production of dative structures in people who claim to be L2 dominant? The following factors were considered to modulate the degree of attrition within the group of L2-immersed late bilinguals: length of residence in the L2 environment, L2 proficiency, and degree of L2 exposure in familiar and work environments. Higher levels of these factors were expected to have a positive correlation with the degree of L1 attrition. This study provides further evidence of cross-linguistic influence and L1 attrition in L2-immersed late bilinguals, supporting and extending previous studies on complex morphosyntactic structures. The different results obtained from the two groups provide evidence of language change even in individuals with fully acquired L1 grammars, given high degrees of L2 immersion and reduced use of the L1.