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15 - The Effects of Environment Change on Third Languages

The Case of Returnees

from Part III - Becoming and Staying Multilingual at Different Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2023

By
Cristina Flores  and
Maki Kubota
Edited by
Jennifer Cabrelli ,
Adel Chaouch-Orozco ,
Jorge González Alonso ,
Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares ,
Eloi Puig-Mayenco  and
Jason Rothman
Jennifer Cabrelli
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Chicago
Adel Chaouch-Orozco
Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Jorge González Alonso
Affiliation:
Universidad Nebrija, Spain and UiT, Arctic University of Norway
Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Eloi Puig-Mayenco
Affiliation:
King's College London
Jason Rothman
Affiliation:
UiT, Arctic University of Norway and Universidad Nebrija, Spain
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Summary

This chapter discusses the development of the language competence of returnee bilingual speakers, (i.e., heritage speakers who return to their (parents’) country of origin and, as a consequence of the return, are affected by changes of their language dominance). We discuss three scenarios in which an environmental shift may affect the status of a L3: (1) L3 attrition, when the L3 acquired in a foreign setting undergoes attrition due to reduction in input after returning to the homeland; (2) theoretical discussions of whether the relearning of an attrited L2 can be considered L3 acquisition; (3) the source of crosslinguistic influence on the L3 and how studying the returnee population can open an exciting opportunity to tease apart internal and external factors that are otherwise confounded in the traditional bilingual population. We combine the interpretation of the limited existing literature on language development in returnees with theoretical considerations, and propose research hypotheses to be tested in future research.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Third Language Acquisition , pp. 380 - 400
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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