Resumen de A 16‐year longitudinal study of language attrition in Dutch immigrants in Australia
In this article a description is given of a longitudinal study of language attrition in Dutch migrants in Australia. In the 1970s, Clyne conducted linguistic research on German‐English and Dutch‐English bilinguals in Australia. In 1987 those informants who were still fluent in Dutch were retested, using the same type of tests and elicitation procedures.
All the speech material of the informants from 1971 and 1987 has been transcribed and analysed. It appears that for this selected set of informants there is no evidence of attrition over the 16‐year period. In addition, they show hardly any of the linguistic characteristics of the larger group of informants in the 1971 sample. It is concluded that first‐language attrition does not necessarily take place in an immigrant setting and that those immigrants who manage to maintain their language in the first years of their stay in the new environment are likely to remain fluent speakers of their first language.
