17h00
salle 159
Jacopo Saturno (Université de Bergamo)
ATTRITION OF AN INITIAL LEARNER VARIETY
This talk describes the attrition of initial L2 Polish interlanguages following increasing periods of lack of input and L2 use.
Within the Italian edition of the VILLA project (Dimroth et al. 2013), 31 L1 Italian learners with no experience of the target language took part in a 14-hour L2 Polish course taught by a professional teacher, whose speech represents the only L2 input available. Classes were recorded and transcribed in order to correlate learner production with the input received.
Among other tests, after 14 hours of input exposure learners took part in a Route Direction task (Klein 1982) in which they were asked to guide an imaginary tourist along a route indicated on a city map. They were then asked to perform the same test after 4 months and again after 8 months following the end of the Polish course, during which period they did not have any contact with Polish. The talk discusses what linguistic structures are most likely to erode as a consequence of lack of L2 input and language use and which, on the contrary, seem to be maintained over time (Bardovi-Harlig & Stringer 2010).
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen & David Stringer. 2010. Variables in second language attrition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 32(01). 1–45.
Dimroth, Christine, Rebekah Rast, Marianne Starren & Marzena Watorek. 2013. Methods for studying the learning of a new language under controlled input conditions: The VILLA project. EUROSLA Yearbook, vol. 13, 109–138. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Klein, Wolfgang. 1982. Lexical Deixis in Route Directions. In Robert J. Jarvella & Wolfgang Klein (eds.), Speech, Place, and Action: Studies in Deixis and Related Topics, 161–182. New York: Wiley.
