We know a fair amount about how people learn languages; we know remarkably little about how language skills, once learned, are forgotten – whatever that means precisely [. . .]. (Lambert Reference Lambert, Lambert and Freed1982: 6)
This statement opens the first collection of papers that specifically consider the deterioration of linguistic knowledge among bilinguals (Lambert & Freed 1982: see timeline), a field which in one of the papers in the volume is referred to as being in an ‘antenatal’ state (Berko-Gleason Reference Berko-Gleason, Lambert and Freed1982: 22). Thirty years down the line it is still a fact that far less is known about the loss or attrition of language skills than about their acquisition.
Language attrition research has developed in several clearly delimited phases spanning, roughly, each of the three decades between 1982 and 2012 (see Köpke & Schmid Reference Köpke, Schmid, Schmid, Köpke, Keijzer and Weilemar2004 for a more detailed overview and analysis). The first phase was an era of stocktaking, with a number of symposia, collected volumes and special issues of journals. All of these collections cast their net widely, attempting to cover not only what, under the current terminology, would be considered ‘attrition proper’, namely the non-pathological loss of previously fully acquired first (L1) or second language (L2) skills in adult speakers (Köpke & Schmid Reference Köpke, Schmid, Schmid, Köpke, Keijzer and Weilemar2004: 5), but also such diverse phenomena as incomplete acquisition, language contact and death, dialect change and death, pathological language loss and so forth. These considerations were usually accompanied by reports on small-scale or pilot studies of ‘attrition proper’ which were intended to lay the background for larger and sometimes very ambitious investigations. Unfortunately, most of these were never actually carried out or completed. A clear theoretical orientation was often lacking in these collections and pilot studies (as is, for example, pointed out in Hill Reference Hill, Weltens and Els1989).
In 1991 the first collection that specifically focused on changes to the native language appeared (Seliger & Vago (eds.) 1991: see timeline), marking the beginning of a decade of a more focused, theoretically and empirically driven approach to language attrition, characterized mainly by a limited number of comparatively large-scale investigations of first language attrition, usually in the form of Ph.D. projects.Footnote 1 This resulted in more clearly defined theoretical foundations and predictions for the field from a variety of perspectives, such as the impact of socio-/ethnolinguistic factors, psycholinguistic questions of accessibility and linguistic and grammatical models. What was (largely) lost from the earlier period was the intensive interaction and exchange between researchers that had taken place in the numerous meetings and collected publications, as the work that was carried out was mainly confined to the typically solitary existence of the graduate student.
From the early 2000s, numerous efforts were made to again create a community and network of attrition researchers and to arrive at commonly agreed-upon methodological approaches as well as a sound theoretical underpinning for this research. This last decade has seen a number of international conferences and symposia dedicated solely to attrition research as well as panel sessions at larger conferences on bilingualism, the formation of a graduate network and the publication of numerous collected volumes and special issues of journals as well as overview articles in handbooks and encyclopaedias. It is probably fair to say that this has resulted in a better visibility of language attrition research and the recognition that the contribution of research and findings from this area can provide important further insights into highly topical research questions, such as the issue of interfaces in grammar and bilingualism (e.g. Tsimpli et al. 2004: see timeline; Sorace Reference Sorace, Cornips and Corrigan2005) and the question of maturational constraints in second language acquisition (SLA) (e.g. Bylund 2009: see timeline; Schmid 2014: see timeline). Again, a fair number of Ph.D. projects on a variety of languages and settings were carried out in this period, many of which adopted the test battery developed within the attrition community (made available on www.let.rug.nl/languageattrition.org and described in detail in Schmid 2011: see timeline).
The overview presented below focuses on studies investigating L1 attrition; articles on L2 attrition, incomplete acquisition or child language attrition, heritage or indigenous minority languages, pathological language loss etc. are not included. I also do not list exclusively theoretical or general overview, handbook or encyclopaedia articles. Where not otherwise indicated, participants in the studies are post-puberty long-term migrants. The items represented in the timeline represent the following themes:
A. Theoretical frameworks and general considerations
A.1 General considerations and overview articles
A.2 Integrating attrition into theoretical models of language acquisition and processing
A.3 Psycho- and neurolinguistic approaches
B. Comparisons of attrition and other linguistic developments
B.1 Acquisition
B.2 Language change
B.3 Incomplete L1 acquisition and heritage language development
B.4 Bilingual development and multilingualism
C. Attrition as a selective process
C.1 Lexicon and semantics
C.2 Morphology, morphosyntax, syntax
C.3 Phonetics and phonology
D. The role of external predictors
D.1 The impact of L1 use and behaviour
D.2 Attitudes and identity
D.3 Attrition and aging
E. Methodological considerations
E.1 The appropriateness and validity of various tasks
E.2 Testing the impact of external factors
E.3 Baseline and point of reference
Monika S. Schmid obtained her Ph.D. in English Linguistics in 2000 from the Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Germany, for a thesis on L1 attrition among German-Jewish refugees. She has since held positions at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and is currently Professor of Linguistics at the University of Essex. Her work has focused on various aspects of L1 attrition. She has published two monographs and edited several collected volumes and special issues of journals on this topic, and has received funding from various sources, including the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Dutch National Science Foundation NWO, for her work.
