2 Literature Review文献综述

As the old saying goes, every coin has two sides，and it is the same with the process of Second Language learning, which not only includes language acquisition, but also inevitably includes language deterioration and lose。 Affiliated with Contemporary Linguistics, language attrition is of great importance to native language and Second Language acquisition。 However, the early stage of language attrition study, there wasn’t a broad consensus on the definition of language attrition。 Different researchers defined language attrition from different perspectives and drew different conclusions。 Lambert and Freed (1982) once defined language attrition “the loss of any language or any portion of a language by an inpidual or a speech community。 Language attrition includes one language takes the place of another language due to the factors of policy and economy”。 De Bot and Wehens (1985, 151-166) described language attrition as “the decline of second language skills, which occurs whenever the learners uses the second language to an insufficient degree”。 Jaspaert and Kroon (1989) gave the definition of language attrition as “the change of language which brings the difficulties to the communication among members of speech community or inpiduals。” Olshtain (1989) was also a pioneer to study language attrition and he noted that language attrition is “due to the environmental changes, the language use is limited and another language is becoming the dominant one”。 What is well known by people is Kopke’s (2004) opinion about language attrition, that is, as the reverse process of language acquisition, language attrition embodies the phenomenon that when bilingual or multilingual users reduce or cease to use certain language, their capability to make use of this language will decline gradually with the passage of time。 This paper will focus on the investigation of language attrition when non-English majors stop coming into contact with English for eighteen months in Chinese language environment。