An Empirical Study On First Language Attrition In Kazakh-Mandarin Bilinguals

This study discussed the first language attrition of early and late Kazakh bilinguals in vocabularies,syntax and structures based on the theory of maturational age effects and interference hypothesis.The testees' first language is Kazakh and the second language is Mandarin.There are 40 early bilinguals who acquired Mandarin within the critical period time.Also,there are 30 late bilinguals who acquired Mandarin after the critical period time.The control group is consisted of 15 monolinguals.Additionally,the reasons for attrition are also analyzed from the view of speakers ' gender,age,educational background,age-on-set of second language acquisition,literacy,writing skills,language use,language contact,language attitude as well as language choosing.The result showed that 1)Compare with the control group,early bilinguals are attrited in Kazakh vocabularies,syntax and structures while late bilinguals are attrited only in vocabularies,mixed-use of second language as well as errors in the first language.2)The factors of attrition can be ascribed to reading ability which can facilitate them to predict the frequently used words,suffix of verbalization and passive forms.The factor of literacy can enable speakers to predict the suffix of verbalization and passive forms.The factors of gender and frequency of language usage is able to help speakers to predict suffix of adjective.3)Among the variables of attrition shared by early and late bilinguals,age-on-set is responsible for attrition in vocabularies of animals and vegetables as well as errors rate in first language.Meanwhile,language attitude and language usage is the main factor to predict frequency of mixed-use of the second language.The agglutination index has no significance in the factor of prediction.