ABSTRACT
Of all situations of bilingual development, first language attrition is arguably the one for which a lifespan perspective is most crucial, since it is conditioned by at least one major life event (most commonly emigration) and furthermore is a slow process where changes typically are witnessed only after years or decades. However, the very factors which make language attrition interesting from a developmental perspective and, theoretically, a prime candidate for longitudinal investigations also form the main methodological and practical obstacles. Investigations following a group of emigrants and potential attriters over a long timespan are faced with the twofold difficulty of keeping track of the same informants (sometimes over decades) and persisting in research which may only yield truly interesting findings after a considerable timespan (not to mention obtaining the necessary funding). For these reasons, there is at the present time only one truly longitudinal study of first language attrition, namely de Bot & Clyne’s investigation of German and Dutch immigrants in Australia, in which the same group of speakers was interviewed repeatedly after long gaps (de Bot & Clyne, 1989, 1994).
