What attrites when and why: Implications of the Bottleneck Hypothesis

Slabakova, Roumyana (2019) What attrites when and why: Implications of the Bottleneck Hypothesis. In, Koepke, Barbara and Schmid, Monika (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Language Attrition. First ed. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 36–48.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

This chapter explores the predictions of the Bottleneck Hypothesis to language attrition. The hypothesis is based on comparing different degrees of success or difficulty in the acquisition of syntax, semantics and morphology. Its main tenets are that functional morphology presents the biggest challenge to acquisition, while syntax and semantics are relatively easier to acquire because they employ universal operations. The grammars of early and late attriters are examined with a view of checking these expectations. An overview of the literature suggests that early attriters are indeed challenged by inflectional morphology, especially when expressed by large paradigms and when lexical learning of affixes is involved. In contrast, early attriters rarely have issues with basic syntax. Essentially the same picture emerges for late attriters, modulated by linguistic complexity, redundancy of the marker, opaqueness of form–meaning mapping, as well as usage frequency. While the Bottleneck Hypothesis is too large-grained to explain all findings, its predictions appear to be largely borne out.

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5-Slabakova revised final in Attrition handbook - Accepted Manuscript

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