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JOURNAL OF APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 4, 277-294 (1983)
Language Loss in Bilingual Chicano Children*
BARBARA J. MERINO University of California, Davis
The results of two studies on language loss in bilingual Chicano children are re- ported. In Study I, focusing on normal language acquisition in balanced bilinguals, 41 children in kindergarten through fourth grade were administered the Bilingual Lan- guage Acquisition Scale (BLAS), an instrument testing comprehension and produc- tion of the following features: number, gender, word order, relatives, conditionals, and Spanish subjunctive and its English equivalents. Most development occurred between kindergarten and the upper grades in the English Comprehension and Production subscales. In the production of Spanish, significant differences appeared between kindergarten and the upper grades to grade three. Unexpectedly, in the fourth grade, performance dropped sharply, with children performing almost ot the kindergarten level. There were no significant differences by grade in Spanish com- prehension. Most significant differences among grades were produced in the more complex categories (conditionals, Spanish subiunctive/English equivalents, and rela- tives) in the production subscales in English and Spanish. By fourth grade, in Spanish (and sometimes by third grade), children were performing with significantly lower accuracy than the younger children, particularly in the more complex structures (subjunctive and conditionals, for example). In Study II, 32 of the original subjects were retested two years later using the same instruments and procedures. While performance in English continued to improve for the sample as a whole, performance in Spanish production deteriorated to a signifi- cant degree. In Spanish, significant differences in performance between the two administrations were found, both for the scale as a whole and for the following categories: past tense, relatives, and the subjunctive. The influence of personal histo- ry and language use patterns wos tested. The most severe incidence of loss occurred among children who tended to use both English and Spanish with the same speaker.
INTRODUCTION
In the United States, educators, politicians, and parents involved in the education of limited English speakers generally focus their attention on the rapid acquisition of English. The concern is a just one. Immigrant children must be able to survive in school and work settings that are largely English-speaking. Often, however, the child’s first language, the immigrant, minority language, is neglected. The price of
* This paper is based on research supported in part by the Earle C. Anthony Award, University of California, Davis. An earlier version was presented at the Northern California Conference of the Califor- nia Association of Chinese Bilingual Educators, held in San Francisco on March 31, 1979. I am grateful to the students, parents, teachers, and administrators of the Redwood City school district
who so willingly gave of their time and made these studies possible. Spanish accents have not been included in this article. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Barbara J. Merino, Department of
Education, College of Letters and Science, University of California, Davis, CA 95616.
277
278 MERINO
this neglect to society as a whole and to the child’s family in particular can only be estimated.
The aim of this paper is to report on two studies of language loss in bilingual school-age children. The first study was cross-sectional; the second was a longitudi- nal follow-up of the same children two years later. The original intent was not to study loss but to focus on the acquisition of two languages simultaneously. Lan- guage loss was an unexpected byproduct.
The study of language change has recently received increased attention among linguists. The focus of such studies has ranged from the study of creoles and pidgins (Hymes, 197 1), language shift (Kloss, 1966), the languages of immigrants (Henzl, 1975), dying languages (Dorian, 1973), languages in contact among bilinguals (Fishman, 1966), and most prominently, the ontogenesis of language in children (Brown, 1973). Interest has also focused on language loss/change among aphasics (Caramazza & Zuriff, 1978), and more recently, language attrition among second- language learners (Cohen & Apheh, 1973). The significance of these studies, as it was aptly underscored by Slobin (1975), lies in the insights they can provide to the discovery of language itself, for in watching language through all these phenomena, the most revealing finding is the universality of the change process as language responds to the constraints of being clear, processible, quick, and at the same time, fully expressive.
In spite of the insights the study of loss can provide, and perhaps because the concept is by its nature a negative one, the phenomenon of language loss has received very little attention. Generally, linguists have studied language shift, a related phenomenon, more extensively (Kloss, 1966; Fishman, 1971). Language shift has been defined as “the change from the habitual use of one language to that of another” (Weinreich, 1970). In studying shift, linguists focused on language change as it affects language communities. The focus, then, is societal. Sociolingu- ists, like Fishman and Kloss, have undertaken large-scale research efforts to study those factors influencing shift and maintenance, its logical opposite, in immigrant communities such as Puerto Ricans and German Americans in the continental United States.
Language loss refers to this same change in the use of languages, but here the focus is on the individual. One of the earliest recorded cases of language loss, is that of a six-year-old refugee from the Spanish Civil War who was adopted by a Belgian family living in Brussels (Tits, 1948). Within three months she had forgotten her first language, Spanish, and replaced it with her second, French. How much and how completely Spanish was lost is difficult to say from the available record. Two years later she reportedly started learning Spanish in a formal setting. In this case, the loss of contact with the first language was abrupt, complete, and traumatic.
By far the most typical situation in which loss occurs is in immigrant families, where the change from one language to another is more gradual. Henzl (1977) traced language loss as it appeared in Czech, spoken by American immigrants of the first to the fourth generation. She found that successive generations of Czech Americans produced gradual transmutations within the case systems. This process
LANGUAGE LOSS 279
began with an elimination of alternate case inflection, and subsequent overextension of a dominant case suffix to minor noun classes. Later there was elimination of case marking where it was largely redundant (in pronominal and adjectival modifiers of nouns). Finally, case inflection completely vanished, and its function was fulfilled by word order.
Loss of language proficiency is also fairly typical among second-language learners. (See Williamson, 1982, for a summary of studies dealing with language skill attrition.) Cohen (1974, 1976) has studied attrition of second-language features in children among L2 English speakers learning Spanish following summer vaca- tion. Noun adjective agreement and person inflection were some of the more likely features to be lost. Smythe, Jutras, Bramwell, and Gardner (1973), studying high school students’ loss of French, found that attrition was progressive, with those who had an eight-month break in exposure scoring lower than those with a three-month interruption.
Very little is known about the nature of loss. How does it happen? What gets lost first? What makes it happen? Is it inevitable? Are some ages more susceptible? These are just a few of the questions crying for an answer. Bailey (1973), in discussing the relationship of language acquisition to language loss, argues that loss is a mirror image of acquisition. Features acquired last are lost first. However, at present this assertion is a calculated, if intelligent, guess and not substantiated by all studies (Caramazza & Zurif, 1978). As Henzl(1977) asserts, until we have data on language loss from many languages, we will not know if what gets lost is a reaction to the language competing with the first, if loss is governed by the same constraints as acquisition, or if loss has a system of its own.
Freed (1980) has reviewed the type of hypotheses. which have formed the basis of language attrition studies. These fall into the following general categories:
1. hypotheses based on regression theory: loss is a mirror image of acquisition; 2. hypotheses based on affective variables: motivation and attitude influence the
speaker’s use of and proficiency in the language; 3. hypotheses based norms of linguistic features controlled by proficient speakers
of the language: the speaker who is undergoing loss is compared to the fully proficient speaker.
The studies reported here, although not truly experimental since their goal is to describe a specific group of balanced bilingual children as they developed through time, relied on elements of each of these hypotheses. The analyses ad- dressed the following issues: Were those features which were susceptible to loss the last acquired? What was the effect of language use patterns as an indirect measure of attitude on language loss? How did the control of features among those who were undergoing loss compare to those who were proficient speakers? More specifically in these studies the proficiency in the use of the following features was measured: number, gender, tense, word order, relatives, conditionals, and Spanish subjunctive and its English equivalents in both production and comprehension among children
280 MERINO
TABLE 1 Summary: Bilingual Language Acquisition Scale*
Category I: Numbera I. “Short” pluralb: Las tazas (the dogs)
2. “Long” plural: Los velices (the noses)
3. Plural in the verb phrase: Los pajaros cantan (The boys work)
Category II: Gender 4. Object pronoun: La mama /a bana (the boy is shaking her)
5. Noun adjective agreement: N oso con la camisa blanca (The dog with a white shirt)
Category Ill: Tense 6. Regular preterite: El nino rego el jardin (The boy painted the fence)
7. Irregular preterite: N nino puso la muneca en /a caja (The man brought the newspaper)
8. Imperfect: Los caballos corrian por el campo (The frogs were jumping in the lake)
Category IV: Word Order 9. Active subject verb object: N tigre mata a/ oso (The bear hits the lion)
10. Active indirect object: N oso le ensena el /eon a/ elefante (The lion is showing the dog to the cow)
11. Passive: El gato fue atacado por el perro (The tiger was hit by the boy)
Category V: Spanish SubjunctiveFEnglish Equivalents 12. Optative: La nina quiere que lave /a ropa (The man wants her to cut the flowers)
13. Purposive: El senor saca un libro para que lea (The girl opens the door so that he will come in)
14. Dubitative: Tal vez el nino traiga e/periodic0 (Maybe the man will smoke a cigarette)
Category VI: Relatives 15. Subject Subject (S-S) parallel function: El /eon que pateo a/ tigre esta empujando al
cabal/o (The tiger that grabs the lion is pushing the horse)
16. Object Object (O-O): La gata empuja a/ gatito que el perro arana (The donkey bites the horse that the lion pushes)
Category VII: Conditionals 17. Unless, negative main clause: A menos que el nino se levante, no va a ver el perro
(Unless she goes straight, she won’t get home)
18. If not, affirmative main clause: Si el avion no sube, se va a estrellar (If the plane doesn’t turn, it will crash)
19. Unless, affirmative main clause: A menos que /a nina se agache, el tigfe la va aranar (Unless the boy sits down, the lion will see him)
20. Contrary to fact: Si el tren no fuera grande, cabria (If the doll wasn’t big, it would fit)
*Spanish accents are not included in this scale.
aGrammatical terminology is generally based on standard textbook usage. bin an effort to make comparisons across languages, short plural nouns were defined as those that require the l-s/ morpheme in Spanish and the /-s/ or /z-i morpheme in English; long plural nouns are those that require the /-es/morpheme in Spanish and the i-azi morpheme in English.
LANGUAGE LOSS 281
acquiring English and Spanish simultaneously. (See Table 1 for a complete list of the features under study.)
STUDY I
Subjects
In the first cross-sectional study, the subjects included all the children at a school in the San Francisco Bay area who were balanced bilinguals, that is, they could speak and understand English and Spanish with equal or near-equal proficiency when they entered school at the age of five years. There were 9 children in kindergarten, 4 in the first grade, 9 in the second grade, 10 in the third grade, and 9 in the fourth grade, for a total of 41. There were 23 girls and 18 boys. Most of the children, except 9 distributed throughout all grades, were enrolled in a bilingual program. The fathers of the children were primarily in semiskilled manual service occupa- tions (dishwashers, gardeners).
The children selected for the study were identified as balanced bilinguals through rigorous criteria which included parent, teacher, and student interviews and questionnaires on language use and ability, as well as longitudinal data available for many of the subjects (Merino, 1976).
Procedure
An instrument, the Bilingual Language Acquisition Scale (Merino, 1976), was developed to measure proficiency in comprehension and production, in English and in Spanish. In the comprehension tasks, the subject selected (by pointing) one of the two pictures which matched the sentence that he heard. In the production tasks, a delayed imitation task, each child was shown two pictures involving some gram- matical contrast and heard a sentence describing each picture. As the experimenter pointed to one picture, the child was asked to produce the appropriate stimulus, which he had heard previously. For example, the experimenter pointed to the picture of a dog and said, “The dog.” She/he then pointed to a picture of two dogs, and said, “The dogs.” Then she/he asked the child, pointing to the picture of the
dogs, “What did I say about this picture. ?” The test tasks are based on a technique developed by Brown and his associates (Fraser, Bellugi & Brown, 1963). Similar techniques are also used in the Northwestern Screening Syntax Test (Lee, 1969).
The morpho-syntactic features included in the BLAS were selected after a careful review of first and second language acquisition research in English and Spanish. The criteria for preliminary consideration were: (a) semantic equivalence between Spanish and English: items such as youltu, usted, which convey the additional feature of formality in Spanish, were avoided; (b) range of difficulty: a concerted effort was made to include some structures that are generally acquired early and some that appear late; and (c) amenability of forms to elicitation by pictorial stimuli. Each category included from two to four subcategories of items. For instance, the category “tense” contained three subcategories: regular preterite,
MERINO
irregular preterite, and imperfect (for data on the development and psychometric qualities of the instrument, see Merino, 1976).
Item Construction. In total, twelve items were written for each type, three for each subscale: English comprehension, English production, Spanish com- prehension, Spanish production. A careful selection process was used to determine which items would appear in the final version of the test. Items were submitted for evaluation to adult bilinguals from the community. They were then piloted on a sample of 20 children. On the basis of statistical analyses, a final selection was made-20 items for each subscale-comprehension and production/Spanish and English.
Criterion validity on the BLAS is available with school achievement data (The Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills) and other measures of oral language proficien- cy (Word Listing by Domain, and the Bilingual Syntax Measure I and II, among others). The relationship of the BLAS to these other measures as measured by Pearson correlation coefficients ranged from a low of .13 with BSM II to a high of .51 with the CTBS and .60 with BSM I. Data on test-retest, internal consistency and point biserials on all items have been collected with the BLAS.
Scoring. Responses were recorded correct or incorrect at the time the test was given. The author then transcribed the tapes and restored the responses, cor- recting them when necessary. The following criteria were used for determining correct responses: (a) comprehension: The children were asked to keep their hands on their laps before responding to each item. To signal their responses the children had to point to the correct picture; and (b) production: Only the target grammatical contrast was scored. Other errors were recorded but not counted. The maximum score possible for each scale is 20; for all Spanish scales, 40.
Questionnaires were developed to establish the children’s language use pat- terns before they entered school and at the time of the test administrations. The children were asked to describe the language(s) spoken with members of their family (parents & siblings) as well as friends, in several domains (home, school, and church). A similar questionnaire was administered to the parents of the children (see Merino, 1976, for detailed results and questionnaire development).
Znformation on the personal history of the subjects. Data on the child’s birthplace, number of visits to Mexico, order of language acquisition, and participa- tion in a bilingual program, was gathered through interviews with the parents, children, and their teachers. Because the first initial cross-sectional study is reported in some detail elsewhere (Merino, 1976), only major findings are discussed here. Participation in the bilingual program had no significant effect on performance on any of the scales: Spanish comprehension, F = 3.07 (1,39); Spanish production, F = 1.54 (1,39); English comprehension, F = .14 (1,39); English production, F = .I2 (1,39).
LANGUAGE LOSS 283
TABLE 2 BLAS Production Subscales by Grade, First Administration (N = 41)
Grade
Significant Duncan’s % Pairwise Range
N Me;n SD Correct Differences Statistic p
Spanish Kindergarten 1 2 3 4
English Kindergarten 1 2 3 4
9 11.1 2.4 56 Kg. -1 13.3 c.05 4 16.8 2:5 84 9 14.1 2.4 71 10 15.3 4.4 77 9 12.8 4.1 65 Kg. -3 12.9 c.03
9 10.33 4.9 52 Kg. -1 16.3 1.01 4 17.25 1.0 86 9 14.89 2.8 75 Kg. -2 13.7 c.01 10 16.20 3.3 81 Kg. -3 18.1 c.01 9 17.22 2.9 86 Kg. -4 20.7 1.01
Results
Most development occurred between kindergarten and the upper grades in the English Comprehension and Production Subscales (Tables 2 and 3). In Spanish production, significant differences appeared between kindergarten and grades one and three. In grade four, performance dropped sharply, with children performing almost at the kindergarten level (Table 2). There were no significant differences by grade in Spanish comprehension on the scale as a whole. Performance in English
TABLE 3 BLAS Comprehension Subscales by Grade, First Administration (N = 411
Grade
Significant Duncan’s % Pairwise Range
N Mean SD Correct Differences Statistic p
English Kindergarten 1 2 3 4
Spanish Kindergarten 1 2 3 4
9 15.22 2.2 76 Kg. -4 5.5 <.Ol 4 17.75 1.0 89 9 16.89 1.8 85 Kg. -1 6.0 c.05 10 17.20 1.6 86 Kg. -3 6.1 c.05 9 17.66 1.7 88
9 14.66 .9 73 4 17.25 1.0 86 9 16.77 2.1 84 10 15.50 2.3 75 9 15.90 .4 80
284 MERINO
comprehension, however, improved significantly from kindergarten to all other grades.
It would be expected that balanced bilinguals as they progress in age would continue parallel development of both languages. For this group of bilinguals how- ever, this was not the case for all subjects in either production or comprehension. Since the study is cross-sectional, the underlying assumption is that the older children are comparable counterparts of the younger ones. To the extent that this is true, actual “losses” can be noted in production among older children. The absence of any development in comprehension suggests that, while comprehension is less susceptible to loss, increases in proficiency of more complex structures did not occur.
In Spanish production significant differences among grades occurred in the more complex categories, conditional and subjunctives (Table 4 and 5). In the case of the subjunctive, the fourth graders were performing close to the level of the kindergarteners. In the conditional, the older children’s performance did not fall so low, reaching down to that of the second graders. Older children did exhibit differ- ent types of errors than the younger children. For example, with the conditional A
menus (unless) only the older fourth graders paraphrased, using its simpler lexical equivalent si no (if not) as in “Si el nine no se levanta, no va a ver el perro”
(Subject 41) (If the boy doesn’t get up, he won’t see the dog). In English production there were significant differences by grade in all cate-
gories except number (Table 4 and 5). With most categories, development was chronological. The notable exception was the smaller sample (4) in the first grade which included two gifted children (a boy and a girl) and two average-ability girls. The fourth graders in all categories performed at mastery level or well above and were generally superior to younger children. Development in English, then, appears to follow predictable patterns for normal acquisition with older children attaining higher levels of proficiency.
Very few differences reached significance in the comprehension scales, Rela- tives in English, Past Tense in Spanish (Tables 5 and 6). In understanding the lack of change in performance in comprehension at different grade levels in both English and Spanish, two types of discussion could be useful. Comprehension levels reached relatively high levels in both English and Spanish. It may be therefore, that the children have reached a ceiling in their performance. They are no longer devel- oping in either language. However, this apparent lack of development could none- theless have two different underlying causes. In Spanish, comprehension could simply be more resistant to loss. In English, comprehension could have reached a plateau and may continue to develop as the children get older. The particular features which reached significance by grade, the Relatives in English and the Past Tense in Spanish may be suggestive. The relative construction is a feature that is acquired late and the fourth graders are superior in their understanding of this feature as compared to all other grades, indicating normal development. In the Past Tense in Spanish, however, the second graders reached the highest levels of profi-
TA
BL
E
4 B
ilin
gu
al
Lan
gu
age
Acq
uis
itio
n
Sca
le,
Pro
du
ctio
n
Su
bsc
ales
: M
ean
N
um
ber
C
orr
ect
by
Cat
ego
ry,
Gra
de,
an
d
Lan
gu
age,
F
irst
Ad
min
istr
atio
n
(N
= 41
)
Kin
der
gar
ten
1s
t G
rad
e 2n
d
Gra
de
3rd
G
rad
e 4t
h
Gra
de
To
tal
(n =
9)
(n
=
4)
(n =
9)
(n
=
10)
(n =
9)
(n
=
41)
No
. o
f C
ateg
ory
It
ems
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
Nu
mb
er
3 2.4
3.0
3.0
3.0
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.8
2.8
2.9
2.8
2.9
Gen
der
2
1.6
1.9
2.0
2.0
2.0
2.0
2.0
1.8
2.0
1.7
1.9
1.9
Pas
t Ten
se
3 1.8
2.2
3.0
3.0
2.4
2.6
2.7
2.5
2.6
2.3
2.4
2.5
Word Order
3 1.4
1.4
2.8
2.3
2.3
2.1
2.3
2.0
2.3
1.9
2.2
1.9
Span. Subjunct.-
Eng. Equiv.
3 1.3
.9
2.0
2.8
2.3
2.0
2.4
2.3
2.9
1.4
2.2
1.8
Relatives
2 .6
.8
1.5
1.8
1.4
1.2
1.3
1.3
1.8
1.4
1.3
1.2
Conditionals
4 1.2
.9
3.0
2.0
1.4
1.3
2.6
2.6
2.9
1.2
2.2
1.6
286 MERINO
TABLE 5 BLAS Analyses of Variance by Grade, Spanish and English Categories, First
Administration, Significant Comparisons
Category MS MS
df (Grade) Error F p
Spanish Comprehension Subscale: Tense Spanish Production Subscale: Subjunctive Conditionals English Comprehension Subscale: Relatives English Production Subscale: Gender Past Tense Word Order English Equiv.-Span. Subjunct. Relatives Conditionals
4,36 1.01 .33 3.03 .03
4,36 3.77 1.05 3.57 .Ol 4.36 4.28 1.13 3.77 .Ol
4.36 1.10 .39 2.86 .037
4,36 .35 .I2 2.96 ,032 4.36 1.50 .56 2.69 ,046 4,36 1.68 .64 2.63 ,050 4.36 2.93 .48 6.11 ,001 4.36 1.85 .58 3.48 .017 4,36 5.51 1.70 3.25 .022
ciency and the third and fourth graders dropped below them, indicating that loss may be taking hold.
STUDY II
Subjects
Two years later with a somewhat reduced sample (32, the remaining other children had moved away), the Bilingual Language Acquisition Scale and the Language Use Questionnaire were administered to the same children who had participated in the earlier study so that longitudinal analyses would be possible. In the follow-up sample there was an equal number of boys and girls (16 each). All except four had been enrolled in a bilingual classroom to grade 4; two of these were in fourth grade, one at third, and one at kindergarten.
Results
While performance in English production continued to improve for the sample as a whole (Fig. l), performance in Spanish production deteriorated to a significant degree, with 50% of the children showing a loss and 25% demonstrating no gains whatsoever (and only 25% improving their performance). In English, on the other hand, only 13% of the subjects showed a loss, 72% gained, and only 6% failed to show progress. It should be noted that three subjects attained a perfect score at both administrations in the English Production Scale. Moreover, the range of loss was substantially greater in Spanish, with a drop of as many as six points in some subjects, as opposed to no more than two points in English in any one subject. In a cross-sectional study such as Study I, one assumes that the older children reflect
TAB
LE
6 B
LAS
C
ompr
ehen
sion
S
ubsc
ales
: M
ean
Num
ber
Cor
rect
by
C
ateg
ory,
G
rade
, an
d La
ngua
ge,
Fir
st
Ad
min
istr
atio
n
(N
= 41
)
Kin
der
gar
ten
1s
t G
rad
e 2n
d
Gra
de
3rd
G
rad
e 4t
h
Gra
de
In
= 9)
T
ota
l (n
=
4)
(n
= 9)
(n
=
10)
(n =
9)
(n
=
47)
No
. o
f C
ateg
ory
It
ems
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
En
g.
Sp
an.
Nu
mb
er
3 2.
9 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 3.
0 G
end
er
2 1.
8 1.
9 2.
0 2.
0 2.
0 2.
0 2.
0 2.
0 1.
9 1.
9 1.
9 P
ast
Ten
se
2.0
3 2.
8 2.
1 2.
8 2.
8 2.
4 3.
0 2.
6 2.
4 2.
6 2.
7 2.
6 W
ord
O
rder
2.
6 3
2.1
2.2
3.0
2.5
2.3
2.4
2.4
2.1
2.6
2.2
2.4
Sp
an.
Su
bju
nct
.-
2.3
En
g.
Eq
uiv
. 3
2.2
1.6
3.0
3.0
2.8
2.0
2.9
2.2
2.7
2.4
Rel
ativ
es
2 .9
2.
7 2.
2 1.
2 1.
5 2.
0 1.
7 1.
4 1.
6 1.
6 1.
8 1.
7 1.
5 C
on
dit
ion
als
4 2.
6 1.
5 2.
7 2.
5 2.
0 2.
7 2.
9 2.
8 2.
2 3.
2 2.
0 2.
8 2.
4
288 MERINO
100 -
WILCOXON MATCHED PAIRS:
SPANISH ENGLISH
T= 152.5 T=46 5 p<.o5 p< .oi
FOURTH THIRD GRADE GRADE
N=6 N=9
0 FIRST ADMINISTRATION SPANISH
FIRST ADMINISTRATION ENGLISH
SECOND FIRST KINDER- TOTAL GRADE GRADE GARTEN
N=6 N=3 N=6 N=32
q SECOND ADMINISTRATION SPANISH
bsl SECOND ADMINISTRATION ENGLISH
Figure 1. Bilingual Language Acquisition Scale Production Subscales by Grade: Median Percentage Correct.
what would happen to the younger children at a later date. However, this assump- tion needs to be verified. It could be argued that the fourth graders in Study I were in some way unique, and that the younger children would not be similarly affected by loss. It is clear from Study II, however, that all grades, except second graders, are affected by loss; differences of as much as 15% appear at first and third grades. The kindergarten children appear to be less influenced by loss with only a 2% change in their performance from the first to the second administrations. At least two possible factors could affect their loss in proficiency. It may be that the full impact of the predominantly English-speaking environment has not yet reached them. Or it may be that other factors not under study make them unique in some way. Perhaps the parents of these children have stronger emotional ties to Mexico, for example. However, the improved performance of the second graders suggests that age and exposure to influence of the majority English-speaking society will not automatical- ly bring about loss.
In Spanish, significant differences in performance between the two admin- istrations were found both for the scale as a whole and for the following categories: Past Tense, Relatives and the Subjunctive, in every case, with a lower level of accuracy at the second administration (Table 7). Performance in the conditional remained static. The Subjunctive and the Past Tense categories showed the effect of loss in the first cross-sectional study. The Relatives only showed loss in the longitu- dinal study. The Conditional, in contrast to the previous study, merely showed a lack of development longitudinally. The loss of the Subjunctive and the Relatives endorses the hypothesis that features which are acquired later would be lost first.
LANGUAGE LOSS 289
TABLE 7a BLAS Production by Category: Significant Comparison (N = 32)
Spanish
No. of Items
3 2
3
Category
Past Tense Relatives
Subjuntive
First Second Administration Administration
% % Median Correct Median Correct
2.61 87 2.23 74 2.00 100 .83 44
2.10 70 1.64 55
Wilcoxon Matched Pairs
Category T Value P
Relatives Past Tense Subjunctive
140 <.05 144 <.05 162.5 <.lO
TABLE 7b BLAS Production by Category: Significant Comparison (N = 32)
No. of Items Category
English
First Second Administration Administration
% % Median Correct Median Correct
3 Word Order 1.25 42 2.80 93 2 Relatives 1.36 68 1.70 85 3 Span. Subjunct.-Eng. Equiv. 2.27 76 2.77 92 4 Conditionals 2.13 53 3.36 84
Wilcoxon Matched Pairs
Category T P
Relatives Past Tense Subjunctive
119 <.Ol 142 <:.05 128.5 c.02 144 1.05
290 MERINO
However, the attrition in proficiency in the use of the Past Tense does not, since it is generally acquired early, by the age of five in monolingual Spanish-speaking chil- dren. It may be that in loss as in pidgins an attempt is made to simplify the system as much as possible, even with features that are acquired earlier. No loss was reported for either study in the Gender or Number categories. These features have often been reported as susceptible to loss among second language learners, as mentioned earlier. It may be that loss affects first language normal learners differently than second language normal learners. Or it may be that loss of these features is likely to happen only when acquisition is interrupted in its very early stages. However, the effects of loss on specific features by certain types of learners cannot be established by this study and must await a later investigation.
In English production there were significant increases in performance in the conditional Relatives, Word Order, and English Equivalents of the Subjunctive (Table 7). In English, increases in proficiency occurred in all those categories where performance had been low at the first administration. Those categories in which the greatest grade differences occurred in the first study also showed the greatest devel- opment in the second longitudinal study: Word Order, Relatives, Conditionals, English Equivalents of the Spanish Subjunctive. By the second administration then, the children had reached mastery in all the categories in English. Thus it appears that normal development in English has continued as the children have gotten older.
In comparing performance across languages, gains in English were signifi- cantly higher than they were in Spanish (the mean gains for English Production totaled +3.0, SD = 3.07, whereas in Spanish the mean loss equaled - .69, SD = 2.72, resulting in a significant T value of 32, p < .Ol, for the Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Test). Most of the children, 88%, lost more or gained less in Spanish than they did in English. In comparing the differences in gains and losses in the two lan- guages, it is once again apparent that loss or a lack of development is more likely to occur in Spanish than in English. In this type of comparison the results in Spanish actually mask some of the actual losses because some children continued to develop in Spanish, thus reducing the average amount of differences in performance for the sample as a whole.
In analyzing specific examples of loss, the similarities to the process of acquisition are immediately apparent. Children learning Spanish as a first language generalize the preterite ending of the more common first conjugation i-ari verbs like llego to second and third conjugation I-ir and I-erl verbs. Children undergoing loss displayed a similar phenomenon. Thus La nina vistio la muneca became La ninu visto la munecu (Subject 2) (The girl dressed the doll).
The tendency to overmark a complex feature like the conditional with a menos (Spanish equivalent of unless was noted in the earlier study, Merino, 1976) and appears as well in this study. Children who previously correctly produced the al menos construction with the verb in the subjunctive as it requires, two years later alternatively produced a menos along with si (Spanish equivalent of if), sometimes with the verb in the subjunctive, sometimes, in the indicative. Thus, A menos que la ninu se uguche became A menos si la nina se uguchu (Subject 13).
LANGUAGE LOSS 291
Reduced accuracy in performance was also evident in the contrary-to-fact construction, wherein either the conditional or the pluperfect were substituted by the imperfect. Thus, Si el tren nofuera grande, cabria, (If the train wasn’t big, it would fit) was substituted by Si el tren no estaba grande, cabia (Subject 33). In this particular case, loss may not be the issue, but rather increased contact with dialect speakers of Chicano Spanish may have influenced these subjects to modify their speech.
In the Spanish subjunctive, changes in performance from one administration to the next, were largely due to the items testing control of the dubitative, tal vez construction. In spontaneous speech either the subjunctive or the indicative is cor- rect, depending on the nuance of doubt the speaker wishes to project. As noted earlier, the production task (actually delayed imitation), required the subject to repeat what the experimenter said about the target picture. The stimulus produced by the experimenter was in the subjunctive. Many subjects changed the item to the indicative. However, in several instances in this category, real loss appears to have taken place. In the purposive construction, children who had previously produced El senor saca un libro para que lea (The man takes out a book for him to read), at the second administration said, El senor saca un libro para que leer (Subject 02). (In the latter sentence, Spanish requires that leer-to read-be marked for person.)
The influence of personal history and language use patterns on loss was tested through the Mann Whitney U-test. Most of the variables considered singly (includ- ing participation in a bilingual program) had no significant relationship with perfor- mance in Spanish production. Only the language use patterns of the father, mother, and friends at school, at the time of the first administration, appear to influence loss with children who use both languages with the same speaker showing the greatest loss.
It seems that the language use patterns of these children’s earlier childhood are more predictive of loss than their current language use patterns when analyzed singly. A child who uses both English and Spanish with his/her mother and father probably represents a family in which English is both permissible and possible. In this type of family, since the parents must have at least some proficiency in English, this ability can be expected to improve with time and corresponding increases in English usage are likely. Similarly, children who used both languages with their friends at school may represent a child who is more willing to seek out friendships among English speakers and may therefore use Spanish less, gradually losing profi- ciency is Spanish.
When the language use data were combined and a profile of predominant language use was developed, similar significant differences were established (Table 8 and 9). Children who tended to use both languages with the majority of their relatives and friends demonstrated the greatest loss.
Information was available on all subjects for their language use patterns with their parents, siblings (no distinction was made between older and younger siblings because not all subjects had both), and friends at school and at home at both times that the BLAS was administered. These ten variables were combined into percent-
292 MERINO
TABLE 8 Effect of Use of Both Languages with One interlocutor on Loss of Spanish,
First Administration
Interlocutor
English or Spanish Only
Median N
Both English and Spanish
Median N P
Father Mother Siblings Friends at Home Friends at School Total Language Use
.33 9 -1.22 23 p < .05 . .31 23 -2.00 9 p < .Ol
0 7 -.80 22 n.s. -.25 20 -1.50 12 ns. 1.00 7 -1.12 25 p < .05 1.33 11 -2.50 21 p i .05
ages (Table 10). Each child was then assigned his or her predominant language use pattern: use of Spanish, of English, or of both. The most severe incidence of loss occurred among children who tended to use both languages with most speakers. These children did not identify one language with one speaker. Children who tended to identify one language, either English or Spanish with individual speakers, showed no loss on the average and some gains (Table 10). It was not possible to conduct a statistical analysis of children who tended to use English alone vs. those who used Spanish alone because of the small cell sizes. However, it appears that children who tend to identify individual speakers with Spanish show the greatest gains. Some children who tended to identify speakers with English or Spanish showed gains but on the average, as a group, these children merely showed no loss.
Schmidt-Mackey (1977), in describing the language strategies of the bilingual family through case histories, reports that strategies of person (that is, where one
TABLE 9 Effect of Use of Both Languages with One Interlocutor on Loss of Spanish,
Second Administration
Interlocutor
English or Spanish Only
Median N
Both English and Spanish
Median N P
Father -.63 19 -1.38 13 n.s. Mother -.58 23 -1.0 9 ns. Siblings -1.67 19 -.38 13 n.s. Friends at Home -.I4 21 -2.90 10 ns. Friends at School -.80 21 0 11 ns. Total Language Use .07 22 -3.50 10 C.05
LANGUAGE LOSS 293
TABLE 10 Distribution of Predominant Language Use Patterns at First and Second
Administration of BLAS (N = 32)
Subjects Using Both One Speaker, English & Spanish One Language
First Second First Second
N % Mean Loss or Gain In Spanish
22 11 10 21 69 34 31 66
-1.73a -2.2P +.60 -.I9
aMann-Whitney Two Tailed Test Without Tie Correction U = 64.5 p < .05; Mann-Whitney Two Tailed Test With Tie Correction Z = 2.04 p < .05. bMann-Whitney Two Tailed Test Without Tie Correction U = 68.5 p < .05; Mann-Whitney Two Tailed Test With Tie Correction Z = 2.12 p < .05.
person is identified with one language) tend to be the most effective way of insuring that children acquire proficiency in a particular language. The children under study seem to justify the assertion that strategies of person are the most effective means of assuring the full development of two languages. However, it must be noted that many examples abound of children who have become successful speakers of two languages in spite of using both languages with the same speaker (the author among them). It may be that unless other factors intervene, systematic schooling in both languages, for example, loss is more likely if the input to the child consists of both languages freely interchanged by the same speakers.
Strategies of place can also be effective, especially if they involve a radical change such as a move to another country or language community. Strategies of place in this study were only analyzed for one set of speakers, the children’s friends. Only the pattern used with friends at school reached significance. Again, children who did not use both English and Spanish with the same speaker were the ones least likely to exhibit loss (Table 8). The relative importance of the language use pattern with friends at school could be explained in at least two ways. The time children spend in school represents a larger portion of the children’s day than the time spent at home or, perhaps, school is an environment highly conducive to interaction in both languages. Speakers who are able to resist that influence are less likely to exhibit loss.
The conclusion must be regarded as tentative; the bilingual children studied constitute a small sample of children. Though their situation is not unique for California bilingual Chicano children living in an urban setting, we do not know how similar or different they are from other bilingual children in other settings with other languages. This study, however, can serve as a note of warning to parents and teachers. The acquisition and development of the home language is not automatic. Even once learned, some structures of a language can be forgotten, at least for children of this age.
294 MERINO
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