Looking sharp: A web-based eye-tracking study of the role of L2 English in L1 Romanian morphosyntactic attrition

Abstract

This project investigated language change in Romanian-English speakers who live and work in countries where the dominant spoken language is English. The participants consisted of native, first language (L1) adult speakers of Romanian, who had emigrated to, and been primarily domiciled in, English-speaking countries for at least 10 years, and for whom English is their second language (L2). The study aimed to combine the research and methodology currently undertaken in the field of first language attrition, with web-based experimental tools. A mixed- method approach was utilised, involving an online eye-tracking task set in the Visual World Paradigm, followed by the collection of relevant language background and history information via an online questionnaire, as well as the remote completion of additional tasks complementary to the scope of the project. Within this experiment, participants were evaluated on their responsiveness to an auditory cue inferring grammatical gender in a picture-selection task. Two conditions were tested, (i) constructions where the Romanian possessive article al/a/ai/ale was present, and (ii) constructions employing superlative adjectives of the form cel/cea/cei/cele mai [adjective]. The participants’ sensitivity to gender agreement cues in online processing, as well as any significant differences between the two conditions formed the basis of the analysis undertaken by this thesis. No significant attrition effects of Romanian grammatical gender were found in either of the conditions tested, supporting previous findings that reduced frequency of use and competition from an equivalent competing structure in the L2 are more likely to affect L1 attrition outcomes over reduced frequency of use alone.