Losing your native language: the 'dark' side of bilingualism

In this talk, Professor Laura Domínguez will present the latest research on native language attrition—the process by which native speakers may ‘forget’ aspects of their first language. Attrition typically occurs after long-term migration, when speakers are exposed to and need to use a second language in their daily lives. Although it is well known that attrition first affects certain aspects of the native language (people often report forgetting words or changing their accent), less is understood about whether attrition can affect grammatical representations (for example, the marking of gender on nouns or aspect on verbs) and how this process unfolds. Professor Domínguez will describe this phenomenon with examples and introduce current linguistic theories. The aim is to show that attrition is a natural outcome of bilingualism, which can be explained by current theoretical models of language acquisition.