Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

Dear Sashadroogie

From the Land of Nod:

"There are numerous continuity errors in Homer that resemble "nods", as for example:
In Iliad Menelaos kills a minor character, Pylaimenes, in combat; but later he is still alive to witness the death of his son.
In Iliad 9.165-93 three characters, Phoinix, Odysseus, and Aias set out on an embassy to Achilleus; however, at line 182 the poet uses a verb in the dual form to indicate that there are only two people going; at lines 185ff. verbs in the plural form are used, indicating more than two; but another dual verb appears at line 192 ("the two of them came forward").
In modern Homeric scholarship many of Homer's "nods" are explicable as the consequences of the poem being retold and improvised by generations of oral poets. So in the second case cited above, it is likely that two different versions are being conflated: one version with an embassy of three people, another with just two people.
Alexander Pope was inclined to give Homeric nods the benefit of the doubt:
Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem,
Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeric_nod

Regards,
John

[Dedicated]

Sashadroogie,

You say that

[johnslat]

Dear Dedicated.

Sashadroogie - irritable curmudgeon in training (and making remarkable progress for one so relatively young) -is seldom serious (unlike, say, I),
so please don't take anything he writes seriously. None of US do.

Regards,
John

[Justin Trullinger]

I've been pretty much skipping this thread- a lot of strong opinions, not much evidence, and frankly nobody seems to have read too much of the good research that has been done. I've just had a read through, though, and it hurts my ears to read:
"antidotal evidence."

Is this the kind of evidence I'm supposed to take if I've been bitten by a snake?

Does it cure cancer?

http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/antidotal.htm

If you're refering to the rhetorical technique of using a story to demonstrate a point, that would be anectdotal evidence.

I'm sorry to be pedantic, but through the laborious process of reading and study, I have maintained proficiency in my native language in spite of my time overseas.


Best,
Justin

[JZer]

I started this post to hopefully be pointed towards some research on this subject.

I would be happy for you to provide me with the title of a book or research paper on this topic.

[Sashadroogie]

[Stephen Jones]

[Stephen Jones]

Second language interference is a fact, though I've never heard of, or heard, it affecting accent.

I used to have to use the COBUILD just to check my collocations. I found that Spanglish was seeping in.

And for the opposite just read 'El Pais'. The number of English turns of phrases is frightening.

[Justin Trullinger]

My thoughts-

Loss of native language is certainly possible, at least in childhood. There as some situations, such as international adoption, where it is extremely common. (http://www.adoptionarticlesdirectory.com/Article/Abrupt-native-language-loss-in-international-adoptees/31721)

Second language influence on first language, at any age, is also well documented, as Stephen Jones says. I don�t know of a case that could really be called �native language loss,� though.

�First language attrition� is a common term (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_attrition) which refers to the phenomenon of reduced first language proficiency. It seems that this usually affects migrants, especially those who live without a first language community in their new country.
The level of �damage� to the first language can vary, but amongst adults (post-pubescent)is usually slight. A good example is probably my own use of �during� in odd ways. (I have lived in Ecuador during 4 years.) Clearly, a mistake related to the Spanish �durante.�
Accent is one area where this is especially interesting, and yes, second language can certainly affect first language accent.
I�ve got a class now, though, so I�d better go. Will try to chime in again later�


Justin

[Stephen Jones]

[gaijinalways]

My older sister noticed my speech had changed a little when she visited. One thing I tend to do a lot more of is codeswitching from English to Japanese (even though my Japanese remains poor ). And I have a tendency to speak slower (not always a bad thing) and explain too much (wait, my wife does that in English... ).

As to vocabulary loss, definately. I remember one time being back in the US, and my friend said, "Kill the lights!" and I had to think for a moment.

As to my accent shifting, not sure. I do know that some speakers who have stronger regional accents do 'soften' them while living abroad, but I believe that is intentional, in the belief that students and other locals will more easily understand them. I haven't noticed any difference nor been told that it has changed.

[Sashadroogie]

Dear Gaijinalways

All probably very true. But this is a far cry from actually 'forgetting' English, or writing like a semi-literate.

Working in any job will probably have some impact on speech patterns - jargon, in-jokes etc etc. It is true that EFL probably lends itself more to this as some teachers degrade their own language in order to be understood by the learners (the dire implications of which should form a separate thread in itself). And some teachers even find it hard to refrain from reinforcing their speech with TEFLy gestures when having a beer with colleagues. But still, none of this silliness is the same as 'forgetting' your native language. The very notion is absurd.

[gaijinalways]

I agree Sasha, for the most part. Certainly the losing the accent part seems far fetched. Forgetting vocabulary or phrases that you rarely use in your new environment is not, and I feel strongly that is part of 'language'.
Perhaps you need to entertain new concepts of 'absurdness' ?

As to writing skills, hmm. I think it would depend on how often you write at a higher academic or professional level. Recently I don't write very often at a higher level (I'm currently not doing any research nor do I deal with any report writing at the moment though that may change with a new class I'm taking on in June), and I am unfortunately exposed and 'have to read' a lot of 'bad' writing (students', usually ).

So I would state that it depends on what you're writing and reading, and of course in which language those texts are in.

[Sashadroogie]

Good. We are in agreement about the accent thing. Actually, these affected accents have been something of an annoyance for most my career abroad. To claim that they occur because of acquiring a second language is far-fetched indeed.

However, I'd say that not instantly having at your disposal a few phrases ( which are certainly part of a language) due to not having any regular use for them is not the same as forgetting the whole language. Incidentally, even when I lived in another English-speaking country I also forgot the names of shops and friends from back home. Didn't need to use those words everyday either. Is this 'language loss' too? Maybe. But it is most certainly not caused by L2 somehow pushing out my L1. And this seriously flawed notion seems to be the central thesis of this thread.

As for writing, well, neither of us is doing any formal research at the moment, and we are both trawling through learners' scripts. But neither of us (even in our worst typo moment on Dave's) has ever written utter tripe like 'antidotal evidence' on account of our efforts to learn Russian or Japanese or indeed on account of the influence learners' errors on us. We seem to be able to use English just fine, even when under the influence of alcohol (though perhaps learner errors are the more toxic). I wonder what rating you or I'd get on the aforementioned Praxis test, or whatever. Ignorance of English has a very different cause from learning another language. Similarly, writing is a skill that needs regular practice - at home or abroad. L2 has little or nothing to do with it.

And as for absurdity, I used to affect to be a Dadaist in my misspent youth. There is no more 'entertaining' concept of the absurd to be entertained than that.

Actually, the more I think about it, believing that learning another language makes you forget your own or involuntarily changes your accent goes beyond the absurd. Not even in an entertaining way either.

Excuse me now. I need to go and fix a urinal to my classroom wall.

[the_thinker]

Yes, there are plenty of studies of people totally forgetting their first language, but I've only read of it happening in children. One example is the following:

�Brain imaging of language plasticity in adopted adults: can a second language replace the first?� by C. Pallier, S. Dehaene, J. B. Poline, D. LeBihan, A. M. Argenti, E. Dupoux and J. Mehler (2003) in Cerebral Cortex, 13, 155�161

This was a study on Korean children who were adopted from the ages of 3-8 by French families. Brain scans of these subjects when in their 20s seemed to suggest that they had totally forgotten their L1 (Korean) as theie brain activity when they were shown words in Korean was no different to subjects who had never had any contact with Korean.

There are also a number of studies that show an L2 can affect an L1, including pronunciation. Googling "Multi-competence Theory" should bring up a lot of information about this. One interesting early article is:

Cook, V. (1995) Multi-competence and Learning of Many Language. Language, Culture and Curriculum 8 (2), 93-98.

Cook mentions a study of Hebrew and English speakers which found that the subjects' pronunciation (the study looked in particular at VOT ��the point at which voicing starts in certain sounds) was different in both languages from monolingual speakers of each. These are subtle effects though, and probably wouldn't be noticeable.

There have also been studies that show that people with an L2 make different judgements about the grammar of their L1. I don't have the reference to hand, but there was a study of Greek speakers that found that those who had studied English made different judgements about the grammatical acceptability of sentences in Greek. Specifically, they were more likely to suggest that a sentences with OVS (object verb subject) word order in Greek was incorrect, as it would generally be in English, even though this word order is common in Greek.

I think that native-speaker English teachers working abroad experience a particular influence that probably hasn't been researched ��we are of course influenced by the language of the country we live in as speakers/learners of it as an L2, but this is in my opinion exacerbated by the way English is spoken by the people living in the country. One personal example is from when I lived in Greece � after a while I actually started to say 'write a test' (a literal translation of the Greek) instead of 'sit a test'. This was probably more likely to have been picked up from students using the phrase in English, rather than as an influence of an L2 (i.e. Greek) on my L1. My own feeling is that intonation is affected very often in this way too.