First language attrition in native contexts: a study on anaphora resolution by Italian speakers of L2 English

Research on second language acquisition has acknowledged that the languages acquired by bilinguals do not exist in isolation, but in constant interaction (Cook, 2003). This bidirectional traffic can cause language attrition, defined as “the non-pathological decrease in a language that had previously been acquired by an individual” (Schmid & Kopke, 2004:5). Studies on L1 attrition have mainly investigated migrants in the L2 environment as typical subjects, implicitly neglecting any other potential attriter profile. However, research showed that bilinguals process language differently than monolinguals (Van Hell & Dijkastra, 2002), that attrition begins with bilingualism (Schmid & Kopke, 2017) and that the amount of L1/L2 use does not have a predictive role (Schmid, 2007). On these premises, the study aims at investigating the possibility that attrition effects can be found in proficient L2 speakers who live in their L1 speaking country, thus challenging emigration and extensive use of L2 as essential prerequisites. The study investigates the interpretation of null and overt pronouns, replicating the picture verification task presented in Tsimpli et al. (2004), on an experimental group composed of native speakers of Italian who are proficient in L2 English and who live in Italy. The two control groups are composed by Italian monolingual adults and middle school students, in order to discriminate between potential attrition effects and language change in the L1 (Cardinaletti, 2004)