Language attrition: uma sinopse das principais questões de investigação

Abstract

This paper aims to give a broad overview of the research field of language attrition. The main goal is to present a brief summary of the most important research questions in this domain: why does attrition occur and what is lost in attrition situations? In the first part the most important factors that influence the attrition process are discussed: the role of age, the influence of the second language, the type and amount of input that the attriter receives, his attitudes and motivations. The second part is dedicated to the linguistic features involved: which linguistic domains are affected by language loss? Within this issue, some research findings concerning loss in the lexical, morphological and syntactic domain are presented.