First Language Attrition Seminar Series

本系列研讨会将重点关注母语流失（FLA）——主要使用另一种语言的讲话者（例如移民）的母语受到损害并显示出跨语言干扰迹象的过程，如找词困难、外国口音或词汇或语法错误。这类经历的个人描述大量存在，并在网上引发了极大的兴趣，例如，一名在日本的加拿大人录制的视频描述了“忘记她的英语”，该视频在YouTube上的浏览量超过了7万次（http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeBHl1PbhDQ）.FLA)，这正在成为双语和多语言发展这一更广泛研究领域中越来越重要的子话题。人们已经认识到，研究双语者的母语变化对我们理解人类语言能力的贡献与研究第二语言习得（SLA）一样多。此外，移徙者常常感到需要关于第一语言流失过程的良好信息，以及它可能如何影响他们与原籍国的个人关系、他们的认同感或他们在抚养子女时所使用的语言方面所作的选择。对于专业语言使用者（外语教师、口译员、导游等）来说，这个问题尤为重要，因为他们第一语言能力的下降可能会威胁到他们的职业存在。人们也越来越认识到，在心理治疗或言语/语言病理学等治疗中，对说话者所有语言的不同使用，特别是潜在的母语，可能有助于从抑郁症和失语症等多种疾病中恢复过来。尽管如此，对二语习得的研究仍然远远多于对FLA的研究，FLA仍然是一个比较边缘的研究课题。由PI领导的国际研究网络与一些共同申请人合作，并在2002年至2011年期间在国际会议上召开了许多会议和小组会议，这大大提高了该领域的知名度。本系列研讨会将以这些努力为基础，扩大磨擦研究的重点，探索与邻近领域的合作与合作的重叠和机会，以便更深入地了解有关人类语言能力的一些基本问题，特别是语言发展的本质。与之前的会议一样，会议的重点是为博士和早期职业研究人员提供支持和建议，特别是通过让他们与该领域经验丰富的研究人员接触，并提供一个平台来展示和讨论他们的工作，以及他们与该领域资深专家可能遇到的任何问题或疑问。

This series of seminars will focus on First Language Attrition (FLA) - the process by which the first language of a speaker who uses another language predominantly (e.g. migrants) becomes compromised and shows signs of crosslinguistic interference, such as word-finding difficulties, a foreign accent, or lexical or grammatical errors. Personal accounts of such experiences abound and spark great interest online, e.g. a video recorded by a Canadian in Japan who describes 'forgetting her English' which had more than 70,000 views on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeBHl1PbhDQ).FLA is becoming an increasingly important subtopic in the wider research area of bilingual and multilingual development, and it is being recognised that investigations of changes in the first language of bilinguals have as much to contribute to our understanding of the human language ability as the study of second language acquisition (SLA). In addition, migrants often feel in need of good information regarding the process of first language attrition and how it may impact, for example, on their personal ties with their country of origin, their sense of identity, or the choices they make with respect to the language in which they bring up their children. For speakers who are professional language users (foreign language teachers, interpreters, tour guides etc.), the problem is particularly important, since an erosion of their first language proficiency may threaten their professional existence. It is also increasingly recognised that the differential use of all of a speaker's languages, in particular the potentially attrited native language, in treatments such as psychotherapy or speech/language pathology may facilitate recovery from conditions as diverse as depression and aphasia. That notwithstanding, studies on SLA still vastly outnumber those on FLA which remains a somewhat marginal topic of investigation. An international research network led by the PI in collaboration with some of the co-applicants and comprising a number of meetings, conferences, and panels at international conferences between 2002 and 2011 has helped raise the visibility of the field considerably. This seminar series will build on these efforts to expand the focus of attrition studies and explore overlaps and opportunities for collaboration and co-operation with neighbouring fields, in order to achieve greater insights into some fundamental questions about the human language faculty and, in particular, the nature of linguistic development across the lifespan. As in the previous meetings, there will be a focus on providing support and advice to PhD and early career researchers in particular through bringing them in contact with experienced researchers in the area and providing a platform for presenting and discussing their work and any problems or questions that they might have with the senior experts in the field.