The relationship between L2 acquisition and L1 attrition in the phonetic domain

This study explored the relationship between second language (L2) acquisition and first language (L1) attrition of speech in late consecutive English-German bilinguals living in an L2 country (Austria). We acoustically examined the bilinguals’ realizations of the lax vowel /ɪ/ in both of their languages and compared their productions to monolingual productions of English and German, respectively. Despite some individual-speaker variation, results showed that those speakers who produced the L2 target vowel in a native-like manner, as manifested in a tensing of /ɪ/ towards /iː/, showed a tendency towards tensing the /ɪ/ vowel also in their L1 English, suggesting L1 attrition. This indicates that successful L2 acquisition of a pronunciation feature might entail attrition of the corresponding feature in speakers’ L1