L1 Lexical Attrition Of The Dong Ethnic Minority Group Students

Language attrition,as a reverse process of language acquisition,has attracted much attention by scholars,and research on language attrition has made significant achievements in western linguistic fields.Compared with research in the western countries,the study on foreign language attrition has been relatively recent in China.For instance,Ni(2006,2013,2015)has conducted systematic research on foreign language attrition.However,research on L1 attrition is still at the stage of introducing theories of language attrition and reviewing results of attrition research abroad.Empirical research on L1 attrition in China,especially on attrition of ethnic minority language is limited.With the development of globalization and urbanization as well as under the influence of the dominant Han language,many ethnic minority languages have changed dramatically in language use,language selection and language attitude.Thus language skills of ethnic minority languages have shown a sign of decline or attrition.L1 attrition,in particular in the regions of ethnic minority groups has become a trend.Therefore,research on L1 attrition in a region of an ethnic minority group like Tongdao Dong Autonomous County is of great significance for ethnic minority language maintenance and heritage in the west of Hunan province.Vocabulary is the foundation of mother language acquisition and is the most fragile part in the language system.Compared with phonology,morphology,and syntax,vocabulary is more vulnerable to attrition.Although the empirical research on lexical attrition at home has made some achievements,there is little research on L1 lexical attrition.Therefore,the present study investigated L1 lexical attrition among the Dong ethnic minority group students from Tongdao Dong Autonomous County in Dong-Han bilingual environment.The aim of the study attempted to explore whether L1 lexical attrition occurred to the Dong ethnic minority group students and what the linguistic features of the attrited words of Dong language were;In addition,the study intended to discover the factors that affected lexical attrition of Dong language and how the Dong ethnic minority group students' language use and language attitude were related to their L1 lexical attrition.The present study adopted a combination of quantitative and qualitative research method.To be specific,the study made use of a vocabulary test of Dong language,a questionnaire of language use,and a semi-structured interview in order to achieve the research purposes.In this study,No.3 Middle School of Tongdao Dong Autonomous County was chosen as the research site.126 Dong ethnic minority group students of grade7,grade8,and grade9 participated in the study.And the data collected from the three research designs were analyzed by Excel and SPSS18.0.Based on the results obtained from the study,the main findings were shown as follows: Firstly,three groups of students all experienced lexical attrition of Dong language during one or three school years.There was little lexical attrition for students of grade7,while students of grade9 suffered the highest degree of lexical attrition.Secondly,there existed significant differences of word class attrition and word length attrition of Dong language.Specifically,the attrition degree of adjectives was the greatest;nouns were more vulnerable to attrition than verbs,while numerals were not the most difficult to be attrited.As for word length attrition,monosyllable words were more subject to attrition than polysyllable words.Thirdly,among the four factors that affected lexical attrition of Dong language,amount of exposure to Dong language,attitude towards Dong language,and period of disuse of Dong language could predict lexical attrition best.Finally,time of exposure to Dong language was highly related to lexical attrition degree.That is to say,the more input of Dong language was,and the more frequently Dong language was used,the lowest of lexical attrition degree became.Besides,those often using Han language or a mix of Dong and Han language suffered a higher degree of lexical attrition of Dong language than those often using Dong language.The above findings of the study will provide some implications for protection of ethnic minority languages without authentic written characters in the west of Hunan province.At the same time,the paper is end up with displaying the limitations of the study as well as the suggestions of for future research.