The Impact of Educational Background in L1 Grammatical Attrition Among Iraqi Kurdish Migrants in the Netherlands
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23918/ijsses.v12i4p5Keywords:
First Language Grammatical Attrition, Kurdish Language, Bilingualism, Grammaticality Judgement Task, Syntactic Structure, Language Shift, MigrationAbstract
This study examines first language (L1) grammatical attrition among Kurdish immigrants in the Netherlands by analysing their responses to a grammaticality judgement task (GJT) in relation to education. Specifically, the objective is to (1) explore how L1 grammatical attrition is manifested in the bilingual group’s performance on the GJT, and (2) explore how the demographic factor of education influences their performance and level of L1 attrition. Participants included 50 bilingual Iraqi Kurdish speakers who moved after the critical period alongside a monolingual control group, also 50 speakers, from Iraqi Kurdistan. A GJT with 83 sentences assessed syntactic structures, verb types, and sentence forms in both Northern and Central Kurmanji Kurdish. The results indicated that bilinguals had significantly lower accuracy scores when compared to monolinguals, suggesting a decline in L1 grammar skills. Educational achievements also influenced L1 attrition among the bilingual speakers in the Netherlands. These findings support the idea that prolonged residence in a second language (L2) dominant environment leads to L1 grammatical decline, especially affecting comprehension. Greater educational attainment was linked to reduced L1 attrition. This work addresses a gap in attrition research by concentrating on Kurdish, which has received limited attention in this field.
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