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Technological University Dublin
CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language
Migration; adult bilinguals; language acquisition; language attrition; language maintenance; age; language use
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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Little To Lose And Everything To Gain: L1 Maintenance And L2 Attainment In Long-Term Migrants, Conny Opitz
Little To Lose And Everything To Gain: L1 Maintenance And L2 Attainment In Long-Term Migrants, Conny Opitz
CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language
This paper reports on a study of adult migrants' L1 and L2 proficiency after extensive residence abroad, focusing on the predictive power of maturational and usage-based accounts respectively. The former perspective assumes age-related constraints on adults' capacity to become proficient in an L2, while the latter argues for the importance of environmental factors. The study adds a novel dimension to this debate by considering both L1 and L2 development. German speakers in Ireland completed German- and English-language tasks and responded to questionnaires. The data provide evidence of a moderate amount of L1 attrition, a high degree of L2 attainment in …