LINGUIST List 17.3173

Mon Oct 30 2006

Qs: Language Reversion in Healthy Elderly Bilinguals

Editor for this issue: Kevin Burrows <kevinlinguistlist.org>

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Directory         1.    Monika S. Schmid, Language Reversion in Healthy Elderly Bilinguals

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Message 1: Language Reversion in Healthy Elderly Bilinguals
Date: 28-Oct-2006
From: Monika S. Schmid <ms.schmidlet.vu.nl>
Subject: Language Reversion in Healthy Elderly Bilinguals


Dear colleagues,

I am trying to find references to cases where elderly migrants, afterfunctioning well in a second language environment for decades, 'revert' totheir first language and appear to develop problems in the second.The existence of this phenomenon seems to be widely acepted. However,virtually all references to it that I can find are of the type ''We all arefamiliar with...'', ''Research has shown that...'' etc., and the onlyactual studies I could find were the ones performed in the 1980s by Kees deBot, Michael Clyne and Loraine Obler.

Is anybody familiar with further (and more recent) actual research on this?If you could let me know, I'd be most grateful. I shall, of course, publisha summary of what I receive.

Thank you,

Monika S. Schmid

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics                             Neurolinguistics                             Psycholinguistics                             Sociolinguistics