Attrition Of French Lexical Words

Language attrition is the reverse process of language acquisition, and the research on it is entering its third decade abroad. More Chinese researchers have paid attention to language attrition in recent years. However, few studies have explored the area of lexical attrition. Even fewer empirical studies have focused on attrition of second foreign language among English majors or French majors in China.This study aims at investigating the attrition of French lexical words that happened to a group of English majors from China University of Petroleum. It is designed to find out the tendency, features, and order of the attrition of French lexical words among English-major students. Two groups of ninety students participated in the study. A lexical test and a background questionnaire were used as the main sources of data. Results of the study indicated that the degrees of attrition of French lexical words varied among the participants, confirming the forgetting curve found by Ebbinghaus (1885). Among words of different kinds, nouns were found the most liable to attrition and disyllable words were the least resistant to attrition. In regards with relevance to English words, French words in different forms but the same meanings, and words with the same form but different meanings were more susceptible to attrition, In addition, this study found the order of attrition corresponding to Jakobson's (1941) Regression Hypothesis. This study concluded that diversity exists among the attrition of different French lexical words. What is more, attrition order of French lexical words is the mirror image of its acquisition order, suggesting strong implications for teaching and learning French lexical words. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are finally provided.