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Yoemichel Domínguez Gutiérrez

Professor Raquel Fernández Fuertes

Research on Languages in Contact: The Importance of Linguistic Data

Master in Advanced English Studies

May 7, 2012

  “Sometimes the American dream is written in Spanglish.”

– Gustavo Pérez Firmat, 1994.

Attrition in the Cuban-American L1 Spanish and L2

English: Is it a minus or a plus?

INTRODUCTION

Following the same spirit of the words from Gustavo Pérez

Firmat1, the particular Cuban-American process of cultural

accommodation is a creative process especially in language. It is

a way of reaching the American dream by mixing two languages and

cultures in contact for centuries. This is what the term

Spanglish is considered to carry. Is this a result of a cultural

mixture or attrition? The aim of this paper is to prove that

there is L1 attrition in the L1 Spanish and the L2 English

1 Gustavo Pérez Firmat was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in Miami, Florida. He is a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. He taught at Duke University from 1979 to 1999 and is currently the David Feinson Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University.

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speakers who were born in a Spanish speaking country (Cuba) and

immigrated to the United States when they were between 5 and 15

years old. This corpus will be developed by using a production

test with seven females and one male participants. This approach

focuses on the analysis of certain linguistic and grammatical

issues that could prove there is attrition of the L1 Spanish.

Therefore I would like to check if these aspects include both

specific grammatical properties (i.e. the use of overt subjects

and the order of adjectives and nouns) as well as two more issues

related to language proficiency (i.e. the use of Anglicisms in

Spanish and Spanish words in English). Another aspect to be

considered is the complexity of sentences in both languages to

measure the level of influence the L2 has over the L1 and the

other way around.

First of all it is important to make a route through the

previous studies about this topic. “The term 'First Language

Attrition' (FLA) refers to the gradual erosion in native language

proficiency among migrants. As a speaker uses their L2 frequently

and becomes proficient (or even dominant) in it, some aspects of

the L1 can become subject to L2 influence or deteriorate. L1

attrition is a process which is governed by two factors: the

presence and development of the L2 system on the one hand, and

the diminished exposure to and use of the L1 on the other”

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(Schmid, 7). This is a process that can be found among migrants

who use the new-learned language in daily life. In the Cuban-

American case it is common to notice that English is spoken at

school and Spanish is linked to the identity they have chosen to

maintain. “The current consensus is that attrition manifests

itself first and most noticeably in lexical access and the mental

lexicon (e.g. Ammerlaan, 1996; Schmid & Köpke, 2008) while

grammatical and phonological representations appear more stable

among speakers for whom emigration took place after puberty”

(Schmid, 17).

There are other studies and scholars who have researched

about the L1 attrition. Some studies which consider pre- and

post-puberty migrants have found that there are important signs

of ultimate proficiency. On the other hand, another number of

studies which investigate the impact of age among post-puberty

migrants fail to find any effect otherwise. In this corpus there

is also a different scope of ages. This is an important element

to take into account for the L1 attrition because it could

indicate a range of susceptibility and a critical period. “It is

worth noting that the crosslinguistic influence explanation also

predicts that the effect of attrition from exposure to English

would be the extended scope of overt subjects at the expense of

null subjects: this is indeed what was found in other studies on

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individual attrition and bilingual first language acquisition”

(Sorace, 2004:144).

“The loss of a native language is often experienced as

something profoundly moving, disturbing or shocking, both by

those who experience it and by those who witness it in others:

“To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and

as sad, in a way”, because it is “like losing part of one’s soul”

is how Alexander McCall Smith puts it” (The Full Cupboard of

Life, p. 163). This process of language attrition can be seen as

both a blessing and a curse.

“Attrition research has often wrestled with the problem of

how to establish the border between the ‘normal’ influences of

the L2 on the L1, which all bilinguals probably experience to

some degree” (Cook 2003). Recently criteria have been suggested

about the impossible distinction of the L1 attrition’s borders

and sometimes it is found unhelpful, as “bilinguals may not have

one ‘normal’ language and one ‘deviant’ one (in which knowledge

is less extensive than that of monolinguals, and also tainted by

interference from L1 in SLA and from L2 in attrition)” (Schmid &

Köpke 2007:3).

“L1 attriters, like L2 learners, may use language

differently from native speakers. In particular, they can have

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variability on certain rules which native speakers apply

deterministically” (Sorace 2005, Tsimpli et al. 2004). In the

context of attrition, however, there is strong evidence that

“this optionality is not indicative of any underlying

representational deficits: the same individuals do not appear to

encounter recurring problems with the same kinds of grammatical

phenomena in different speech situations or on different tasks”

(Schmid 2009). The frequent use of a particular language may help

to maintain the native language system intact, but how this fact

could exist among immigrant’s children who are exposed

permanently to the L2; and they choose to speak in the L2 as if

be their L1.

METHOD

The participants

For this study were selected seven females and one male (Mary 30

years old, Marian 30 years old, Nelly 33 years old, Danny 18

years old, Sue 18 years old, Ana 16 years old, Danay 19 years old

and Gio 39 years old). They all were born in Cuba and acquired

Spanish as the L1 during less than 15 years. However, it should

be clarified that Mary, Marian and Nelly left Cuba as adolescents

(14 – 15), but Gio (7 years old), Danny (5 years old), Sue (8

years old), Danay (5 years old) and Ana (7 years old) when they

were children.

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Data collection procedure

The test consisted on describing one specific picture using the

L1 Spanish and another one using the L2 English. The participants

should do the task under limited time (30 minutes) and they

should send it back before 12 hours. It was asked to write more

than 120 words in each language. This production test is a

suitable proposal to check on attrition in L1, but it is not the

only one. It is true that this test is risky because we could

not gather the specific data we need. However all the data was

successfully gathered and the participants were really

cooperative.

Certain linguistic aspects that are different in Spanish and

that could point out language attrition. These aspects include

both specific grammatical properties (i.e. the use of null/overt

subjects and the relative order of adjectives and nouns) as well

as two more issues related to language proficiency (i.e. the

presence of Anglicism in Spanish and of Spanish words in

English). The complexity of sentences in both languages was

another issue that was considered and analyzed to check the

attrition in the L1.

It is actually difficult to demonstrate attrition of the L1

when participants have emigrated to a different language speaking

country, in this case Spanish to English; using just one test to

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get data. Despite of this fact it is remarkable to notice the

evident attrition of the L1 when they become bilingual adults.

Let us make an analysis of the data taking into account the

different grammatical and lexical elements that were checked.

Participants Use of overt

subject in L12

Use of the conjugation of the 3rd p. Sing. in

L23

Use of gender in

adjectives in L1

Use of Spanish

gender in determinants

in L2

Anglicism in L1

Complexity of sentences

in L1

Mary 100% 100% 3 5 2 100%Marian 100% 100% 5 9 1 100%Nelly 100% 100% 8 7 none 100%Danny 100% 100% 4 6 2 100%Ana 100% 100% 5 7 4 100%Sue 100% 100% 2 9 1 100%Gio 100% 100% 7 10 none 100%Danay - 0% - - - -Table 1: The results collected.

RESULTS

Discussion

The gathered data was analyzed using percentages in order to

calculate the results. In the case of the use of overt subject in

L1 the 100% was in relation to the number they produce per

sentence (table 1). The same pattern was used in the analysis of

the use of the third person marker in L2. On the other hand the

use of gender in adjectives and the use of Spanish gender in

determinants the average was established using the high score of 2 L1: Spanish.

3 L2: English.

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the participant who use them more. Perhaps, this is not the best

way of having a referential data but it was limited among these

specific participants. It is important to highlight that among

the participants there was a unique case who could not fulfill

the task completely; Danay. She was incapable of writing a word

in her L1 Spanish, as she said. However I didn’t disallow her

data because it could be useful to prove the aim of this

research. If this participant is incapable of producing a

description of a picture in her L1 that is a clear date of her L1

attrition.

Table 2: Results of L1 data.

As the data shows in the overwhelming majority of the

participants the use of overt subject in the L1 was used. This

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is, in my point of view, one of the signs that shows attrition in

the L1 because in Spanish it is allowed to omit the subject, but

none omitted the pronoun of the sentence.

In the case of the use of adjective gender, it is remarkable

how all the participants selected the adjectives and nouns nearer

to the L2, regarding spelling and gender. And there are three

cases which misspelled the adjectives in the L1 description.

Another point is the order of the adjectives as parts of the

sentences. At least the 75 % wrote the adjectives before the noun

as in the L2 rule. This is, in my opinion a sign of a strong

influence of the L2 over the L1.

Another aspect analyzed was the complexity of the sentences

in the Spanish text they should produce. All the participants

used short sentences and the L2 canonical order. Maybe this is a

weak element as an attrition marker but it is, at least, an

evidence of the L2 English dominant influence.

On the other hand, it was selected the issue of Anglicisms

in the L1to prove attrition in the L1. Although Anglicisms might

not be related to attrition necessarily, if the speaker uses

words from the L2 in the L1 because these words have been

forgotten this can be a sign of attrition in the L1. Moreover in

the case of L1 Spanish when the L2 English begins to be the

dominant language. It is true that Anglicism is a language-

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contact phenomenon, but the percentage of use is ruled by the

level of assimilation of the receptive language. What researcher

tries to check out on these Anglicism markers is if the

participants use L2 nouns and adjectives in the production of the

L1.

Table 3: Results of L2 data.

The other issue to be checked out in this corpus was the 3rd

person singular verbal marker in the L2.Mary and Ana were under

the 60 % (table 3). Additionally, gender is one of the issues to

take into account when two languages that are quite different

like English and Spanish are in contact. It is known that in

English gender is not that marked as in Spanish, especially in

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the use of adjectives and nouns; that is, if what the noun refers

to does not have biological gender, then the noun simply has no

gender at all. In the case of the use of Spanish gender in

determinants/determiners the date was of a rank between 50% and

100% of correctness. Most of the participants used the correct

determinant in the L1, but not in the L2.

CONCLUSION

After this data collection and transcription process I conclude

that there is, at least, clear symptoms of an attrition process

in all the participants in the corpus. Then, in the case of

Cuban-American second generation children who were born in Cuba

and immigrated to the U.S.A before being adults there is

attrition, taking into account these data. It is true that in the

case of those who emigrated before 10 years old the process is

over marked. However there is attrition in a written level

because the participants are losing several elements in the L1;

elements which are relevant to the remaining the language and the

bilingualism.

There are some data which are relevant in order to attrition

and in order to non attrition. In the cases of Nelly and Gio,

they have kept a great level of command in both the L1 Spanish

and the L2 English. It is true that these two participants are

the 20% of the group. At the end of this research there are new

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questions and it could be interesting to collect spontaneous data

and record it. That could be a way to demonstrate if in the oral

production occurs the same loss of proficiency. Besides, the

number of participants should be increased into a wide scope to

contrast these data with other ones.

WORKS CITED

JAMES COOK, VIVIAN. The Effects of the Second Language on the

First. Frankfurt, 2003.

LAUFER, B. “The influence of L2 on L1 collocational knowledge and

on L1 lexical diversity in free written expression.” In V.

Cook (Ed.), Effects of the Second Language on the First (pp.

19-31). Clevedon: Multiingual Matters, 2003.

LYNCH, ANDREW. Spanish-Speaking Miami in Sociolinguistic

Perspective: Bilingualism, Recontact, and Language

Maintenance among the Cuban-Origen Population. University of

Miami. Research on Spanish in the United States: Linguistic

Issues and Challenges. Ed. Ana Roca. Somerville, MA:

Cascadilla Press, 2000. 271-283.

Available at: http://works.bepress.com/andrewlynch/8.

MURTAGH, L. Theory and Research on Second Language Learning and

Bilingualism. Implications for Working with Children of

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Foreign Nationality. [Invited Lecture], NEPS Summer School,

Marino Institute of Education, *, 01-JUL-04.

PAVLENKO, ANETA. “L2 Influence and L1 Attrition in Adults

Bilingualism.” In First Language Attrition:

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Methodological Issues. Ed.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 2002.

SCHMID, MONIKA S., BARBARA KÖPKE, MEREL KEIJZER AND LINA

WEILEMAR. First Language Attrition: Interdisciplinary

Perspectives on Methodological Issues. Ed. Vrije

Universiteit Amsterdam. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data, 2002.

------. “On L1 attrition and the linguistic system.”University of

Groningen. 2009.

------. & Kristy Beers Fägersten. “Disfluency markes in L1

attrition.” 2010.

SORACE, ANTONELLA. “Native language attrition and development

instability at the syntax-discourse interface: Data,

interpretations and methods.” Bilingualism: Language and

Cognition 7 (2), 2004, 143 – 145. Cambridge University

Press: 2004.