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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.
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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:
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